The Babel Conservatives thought they had everything organized. When the Barrie riding was split, the south half of the city had lots of reliable conservative country voters from south of the city added. It was the same for Barrie’s north half. The new riding of Barrie, Springwater, Oro Medonte comes complete with its strong phalanx of rural conservatives. The political name for the process is called gerrymandering.
It should have been clear to the Conservative Party adherents when the Babel MP adopted his new running mate on whom he intended to bestow the new north riding. (He had already decided that the south riding would be the safest for him.) It has been interesting watching while the wannabe MP follows the sitting MP around town. As a sitting councillor (for a ward in the south end), the trainee has had to decline to run for re-election this fall as he did not want to be seen running for city council while campaigning for the federal nomination. It shows the sacrifices our politicians sometimes have to make to seek high office.
But the more serious problem is that a contender has come forward seeking the Conservative nomination in the new riding of Barrie, Springwater, Oro Medonte. While there is some confusion about the origins of this contender, he certainly has some interesting bona fides as a Conservative. He worked for Babel’s Reform MP Ed Harper from 1993 to 1997 and ran a losing campaign for the Reform Party in the area that included Orillia in the 1997 federal election. He has since worked in Ottawa for various Reform-Alliance and Conservative MP’s. Most recently, he has been working for BC MP Russ Hiebert whose extremist views on social issues might seem more suited to American Tea Party Republicanism than Canadian politics.
And that is why the contest between the new contender and the Babel MP’s hand-picked running mate will be followed with some interest by other political parties in Babel. Somebody needs to ask some questions of the contender to ensure that he is not hiding any extremist credentials from the riding’s Ontario Conservatives who will be choosing their candidate.
The Babel MP’s candidate might be a little young, a bit naive and short of ideas but, like his mentor, is quite unlikely to ever make any name for himself in politics. This guy from Ottawa might be a lot more ambitious.
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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry
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