There's been some good breakdown of the potential outcomes of next Saturday's Alberta PC leadership second ballot. As I've said before, a lot will depend on how many memberships can be sold this week and how well defeated candidates like Dave Hancock, Lyle Oberg, and Mark Norris can retain the support of supporters and direct them to support Ed Stelmach.
Also, it should be interesting to see if the 36 MLA's who are supposedly supporting Jim Dinning actually get out and sell PC memberships this week (we're all looking at you Barry McFarland...).
I wouldn't be surprised if large portions of Lyle Oberg's support and Mark Norris' rural support went to Ted Morton on the second ballot. But, because of the PC membership sales this week it will be fairly difficult to track this.
Ted Morton is definately the anti-establishment candidate in this race. If you're a Tory and you want things shaken up, I'm pretty sure Ted Morton is your man. Ed Stelmach may have "integrity," but I still can't name one thing he did after being a member of the PC Cabinet and Caucus for 13 years. And I think I've made my thoughts on Jim Dinning fairly clear in the past.
I'll have more of my thoughts in the next couple days, but until then I'll direct you to Duncan's breakdown on the probabilities of the preferential second ballot.
Also, I was impressed with Green leader Elizabeth May's second place good showing of 25% in last night's London-North Centre by-election. Considering Liberal Glen Pearson was only elected with 34% and Conservative Diane Haskett placed third with 24%, it should be interesting to see how this will effect future Green support across Canada. It doesn't do anything bad for their legitimacy...
And finally, the Federal Liberals are holding their leadership selection this upcoming weekend. Who will win? Michael Ignatieff? Bob Rae? Gerard Kennedy? I guess we'll see, but to tell you the truth, other than reading the weekly pdf edition of the Hill Times than arrives in my mailbox weekly, I haven't been spending any large amount of time paying attention to Federal politics...
UPDATE: Will has some thoughts on Jim Dinning's speech yesterday...
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
tuesday hawking.
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4 comments:
Dave - it will be Dion on the third ballot!
It will be Stelmach based on the second choice of either Dinning or Morton - who ever drops off.
It will be interesting to see the total Alberta turnout and the split on the first choice numbers.
I can name something Ed Stelmach did: bring in restrictions on photo radar, and then do absolutely nothing when Edmonton Police violated most of the rules mere weeks later.
And now happily promoting it on Alberta highways as a way to turn police officers into tax collec...er, "make our roads safer". Yeah, I'm sure he'll go toe to toe with Ottawa on our behalf...
Feynman and Coulter's Love Child,
You are very talented at twisting the truth. All Ed said on the photo radar issue in this campaign is that he was not averse to employing it in areas where provincial highways go through school zones. In a lot of small towns this is commonplace and it is not feasible to use RCMP to sit and monitor speeding in these places - simply not enough cops. He IS NOT advocating employing it everywhere on highways.
Actually, if your memory goes back far enough, Ed shut down photo illegitimate radar traps that Edmonton city cops put in place. Places where they put the photo radar IN FRONT of the warning signs. The shut downs did happen there - police had to reconfigure their traps to have the photo radar machine behind the warning sign.
"He IS NOT advocating employing it everywhere on highways."
Uh, what does this mean? Obviously he won't have photo radar everywhere. The fact is that he is advocating the use of them on highways - at certain locations. This is implied by your later statement that there are not enough cops to watch for speeders - hence the use of photo radar.
This was not a popular move and has since been greatly downplayed (basically a no-win situation).
This kind of stuff won't (hopefully!) affect an individual's vote next Saturday.
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