Monday, February 06, 2006

David Emerson: Betraying the NDP electorate?


Now here's an interesting development in the ongoing David Emerson saga. In the comments section in the previous post, commenter Aunty Bertha writes:

The word I got from someone who worked the phones for [NDP candidate] Ian Waddell's campaign was that people who would normally vote NDP were voting Liberal in order to keep the Conservatives out.

If this is true, this means (obviously) that people who would normally have voted NDP voted strategically to prevent a CPC member from winning the riding.

But consider this excerpt from this piece, which describes Emerson's victory party (emphasis added):

At the Golden Swan, a Chinese restaurant on Victoria Drive, supporters chanted his name as Emerson arrived to deliver his victory speech.

"I feel very happy with the results," said the former cabinet minister. "This is traditionally NDP territory and to win again feels good."

Emerson is clearly taking credit for the victory in what he admits is traditionally NDP territory, ignoring the possibility that the only reason those NDP stalwarts voted him in in the first place was to prevent a CPC win. If the voters in Emerson's riding had suspected Emerson's intentions, they may very well have voted strategically to elect the NDP candidate instead which, as you can see from the voting results here, was a definite possibility.

If what Aunty Bertha suggests is true, for Emerson to take credit for that victory is unspeakably sleazy.

AFTERTHOUGHT
: I'm sure someone else has already thought of this, but is it possible that Emerson based part of his campaigning on a plea to NDP voters to elect him to make sure a CPC candidate didn't win the riding? Then he turns around and defects to the CPC, anyway? It sure sounds like this is a possibility, doesn't it?

6 comments:

Aunty Bertha said...

Like I said CC - there are all kinds of uncharitable thoughts running around in my head about this and all of them smack of premeditation. While I hadn't considered your particular scenario, it certainly wouldn't surprise me.

Carpetbagger is the word my source uses to describe Emerson. Personally, I think that is a little too charitable.

Great Aunty B.

CC said...

Given that you're a lot closer to the situation, can you check if Emerson's campaign was explicitly encouraging NDP voters to vote Liberal to prevent a CPC win? That would be an interesting development if it were true.

Aunty Bertha said...

Email between Source and me:

AB: So, do you think that Emerson's campaign explicitly encouraged NDP voters to vote Liberal to prevent a conservative win?

Source: The Liberal campaign certainly did, and Emerson ran under their banner. I don't know to what extent he personally repeated their lines, but the liberal campaign ads aimed at strategic voters definitely ran in his riding.

CC said...

If this is true, I think this is a huge story. It means Emerson would have been deliberately misleading voters in order to steal votes from the NDP.

And it also means he undercut the actual CPC candidate in that riding.

Aunty Bertha said...

A charitable afterthought...If he didn't actually start out with this intention, is it possible that he developed the plan after the Liberal campaign strategy kicked off? If so, then is it possible that the Liberals set themselves up for betrayal?

Who will be the next member of the Liberal dream team to jump ship and will it be port or starboard?

While I have issues with the concept of crossing the floor (resign and run in the by-election if you don't like the party you won with), I would love to see Dosangh come back to the NDP fold.

Great Aunty B

CC said...

I would have to believe that Emerson already had plans to defect before the election. It's just not plausible that all of that happened in the less than two weeks after the election, especially given the high-level cabinet post he got.