Thursday, January 12, 2006

NDP picks up Southern Interior seat from Tories

OK, that's a little premature.
But Stephen Harper's reasonable decision to dump candidate Derek Zeisman should hand the riding to New Democrat Alex Atamanenko.
The race was already expected to be close.
But then came the news that Zeisman is charged with attempting to smuggle a used Mercedes and alcohol into Canada, and hadn't told the party about his legal problems. Harper said it's too late to drop Zeisman as a candidate, but he won't be allowed to sit as a Conservative if he's elected.
Not much chance of that.
Score a gain for the New Democrats.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

'Tory campaign manager John Reynolds says the party intends to stand by Zeisman and the charges against him were only "administrative" in nature.' - CBC

John Reynolds must still be cleaning the egg off of his face.

Anonymous said...

The Conservatives and the odd Liberal,like to boast about how Sven Robinson did a nasty thing and isn't deserving to run. Well lookie here.

Sven spent many years as a MP , worked like a dog for his constituents, did something way out of character, admitted it, resigned as a MP, went in front of a judge and got an absolute discharge.
So John Reynolds says the party stands by Zeisman as the charges are adminstrative. If proven guilty does that still make him a upstanding Conservative? Heck it was only a car and it was full of booze he was trying to get throught the border. Was the guy a bit of a nut case to try such a stunt? Are Harper and Reynolds in the same party? A real bunch of law and order folks as long as it's not them.

Anonymous said...

Might be bad news for the NDP candidate if his supporters vote Liberal to stop the NDP.

RossK said...

Interesting, the different tone in comments between Mr. Harper and Mr. Reynolds.

Given that the latter is running the National Campaign it's hard to believe that this is just a coincidence.

In fact this pushing the leader away from the base while the pols peel off and move back to placate the base seems to be a recurring theme in the CPC strategy.