Tory-gate hits 30K mark

There’s at least $30,000 of public money for Tory party work in the Ed Byrne statement of facts, according to the official opposition. 

They popped out a news release yesterday that included a table of other PC party spending in the Byrne fraud and bribery conviction case.  The local media haven’t touched this angle of the story at all, oddly enough.

This money isn’t covered by the restitution order, contrary to the claim of former PC Party president – and current deputy Premier – Kathy Dunderdale.  She told the legislature her party was prepared to pay the money back (she meant the 3K from St. Barbe) but decided against it because Byrne had been ordered to pay it back.

Makes you wonder who gave Dunderdale and her colleagues the really bad advice.  Anyone who read the decision by Judge Mark Pike would have known the difference. It’s pretty obvious.

Of course, the Byrne agreed statement only covers a portion of the total.  According to the agreed statement, Byrne received a total of $501,507 in constituency allowance payments with the bulk of it coming in FY 2001, 2002 and 2003.

Byrne only copped to paying back $117,300 which, according to the statement, seems to be what he took for himself. The rest is pretty much a black hole.  The public has no idea where their money went. 

All the Tory party spending  detailed below  isn’t in the restitution order.  No one knows how much more there is since the government and the chief electoral officer  - himself a former president of the Tory Party - are refusing to investigate.

Tory Trevor Taylor, elected in the other by-election in January 2001, called the whole sordid mess in the House dating back to 2000 “dirt and filth”,  a“serious stain on the political face of Newfoundland and Labrador.”

He’s absolutely right, of course.

But then Taylor voted against an investigation into the large chunks of the mess that haven’t been looked at by the police and that will likely keep going unexplored as long as Taylor and his colleagues have their way.

And it’s not like Taylor is unaware of the legal niceties of all this.  Get a load of his comments about the $30K:

The only piece that is within the purview of the Chief Electoral Officer, as far as I know, is the $3,000 that was spent on the St. Barbe campaign in the by-election of 2001. That is the only thing that he has authority to look at. He has no authority to go and look at how some funds may or may not have been sourced from constituency allowance and then utilized to conduct research for the PC Party of Newfoundland and Labrador. That is where the RNC came in. That is where the courts came in. That is where the Auditor General came in. That is who has responsibility for that. [Emphasis added]

Somebody has been doing their research into reasons why not to go looking, evidently.

At the end of it all, the most apt description of what’s been happening with Tory-gate came, ironically enough from Ross Wiseman.  The guy who got elected as a Liberal and then crossed the floor said this:

I am not supporting this motion because it reeks of cheap politics. It is partisan politics of its worst.

He’s right but not in the way he seems to have intended.  The sordid mess began as partisan politics at its worst, continued as partisan politics at its worst – as the Byrne case now makes plain, stayed the course of cheap partisan politics in June 2006 and now remains exactly where it has been:  in the political gutter.

Wiseman, Taylor and their 34 colleagues ensured that by continuing to oppose an investigation that would root out all the rot, no matter what party it was in.

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-  Gus Coombs received a payment of approximately $2,000 from Edward Byrne for an expense he incurred while running as a candidate in the 1999 Provincial Election

$2000

Page 10, paragraph 31

-  A cheque was located showing that Gus Coombs receive a cheque for $3,600.

$3600

Page 10, paragraph 32

-  Wayne Clark stated that around that time in 2001, he was assisting in running a byelection campaign for Wally Young in the district of St. Barbe. Wayne Clark stated that, at that time, he did receive a payment for his services and expenses and it would have been for approximately $3,000.

$3000

Page 11, paragraph 35

-  Charles White stated that they billed the PC Party $10,000 and they received two payments in the form of personal cheques from Edward Byrne. One payment was for $4,000 and one payment of $5,000 and they wrote off the remaining $1,000.

$9000

Page 11, paragraph 42

-  Gina Steele had worked as a receptionist in the PC Party Office.

She stated that she had received a personal cheque of $1500 from Edward Byrne around the fall of 2000. She stated that Edward Byrne had given her the cheque because he felt bad about her being let go from her job around September 2000.

$1500

Page 12-13, paragraph 46

-  Vernon Smith stated he did some work for Edward Byrne and the PC Party around December of 1999. Vernon Smith stated he believed he was paid about $4,000 for this work. Vernon Smith was shown a copy of a personal cheque of Edward Byrne dated December 22, 1999, in the amount of $4,025 which was made payable to him. Vernon Smith acknowledged that

He received this cheque and that it was his signature on the back of the cheque.

$4,025

Page 13-14, paragraph 51

-  Noella Hynes acknowledged being given $1,500 by Edward Byrne. Noella Hynes stated that she had been promised a job by Edward Byrne so she quit the job that she had been working at, only to find out that there was no job with the PC Party. She said that Edward Byrne gave her $1,500 to help her out until she got another job.

$1500

Page 14, paragraph 14

-  Derek Connolly stated he did work for Edward Byrne and the PC Party, but he had been paid by Government issued cheques. Derek

Connolly acknowledged he did receive a personal cheque from Edward Byrne for $1,200, but could not remember for what purpose.

$1200

Page 14, paragraph 61

-  Supporting documents attached to a claim was an invoice in the amount of $3,944.21 from Canadian Helicopters. The invoice was dated January 10, 2001, and the flight date was January 3, 2001.

(this trip would have been for organizing by-elections on the Northern Peninsula)

$3,944.21

Page  17, paragraph 73

Total: $29,769.21

Disquieting similarities

Via labradore, a disquieting trend among certain people leaving comments on various websites over time.

1.  During the Cameron Inquiry when the Premier raised a stink about the way Madam Justice Margaret Cameron was conducting the inquiry:

“another waste of our tax money.”

2.  From 2007, when a question was raised about giving extra cash to the New Democrats even though they’d lost one of their two seats in the legislature:

“Waste of tax dollars.”

3.  On Tory-gate:

“… an investigation will be a complete waste of money!”

The same refrain has been used constantly, like from April 22 and the longer string of comments from the question of the day over at voice of the cabinet minister.

labradore didn’t get ‘em all yet, though.

4.  How about a federal Tory talking point about the Mulroney-Schreiber affair?  Across the country, the faithful deployed their talking points to newspaper letters pages and online comments in droves all with the same refrain:

“waste of money”

5.  Does anyone remember the Tory Talking Point when the whole House of Assembly scandal first broke open and some of us called for a public inquiry into the whole mess?

Well, there was a line that started right at the beginning, namely that Danny Williams was responsible for rooting out the bad stuff.

It was there on Day Two.  That was the day the rest of us found out about it.  Day One was actually the date on which Ed Byrne told the Premier the Auditor General was poking into Byrne’s allowances.

That same theme was also there when they announced the appointment of what became the Green Commission:

In light of recent findings of the Auditor General into the finances of the House of Assembly, Premier Danny Williams today announced that his government will build upon the successful reforms already implemented since forming government.

And that theme continues right down to the latest revelations about public money funnelled illegally and improperly to pay for Tory party operations between 2000 and 2003. Try Trevor Taylor from the debate on a motion to appoint an investigation into the sordid mess. 

Taylor voted against looking into what he described as “filth” but not before he went back to the Tory Talking Point Number One:

none of this would have uncovered and laid bare before the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, had it not been for the election of 2003 when Premier Williams and this government were installed in this place as the government.

But what was Talking Point Number Two, the one used to deal with calls for a public inquiry?

Take a guess.

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Don’t remind her, Tommy #nlpoli

The townie Tories are all a-twitter over federal Dipper leader Thomas Mulcair’s endorsement of Sheilagh O’Leary for mayor of Sin Jawns in the next municipal election.

On Monday, reporters asked Premier Kathy Dunderdale about Mulcair’s comments.  Here’s a bit of what she said, via CBC:

"I don't know how somebody who doesn't live here, is not on the ground, doesn't appreciate the demographics to start with and the particular issues, could be offering advice on who is best suited," said Dunderdale outside the House of Assembly Monday. [capitalization corrected]

“So the frig what?” would seem like a better, i.e. appropriately dismissive, response.  Instead Kath used a comment that begs for the retort that she does it all time:  talks about stuff when she doesn’t “appreciate the demographics” or understand what is going on.

Tory-gate: former electoral officer supports spending probe

Paul Reynolds’ predecessor knows that to do.

Former chief electoral officer Chuck Furey says that he’d have appointed a retired judge to investigate the St. Barbe by-election.

Furey, a former Liberal cabinet minister, now lives in Dominica.  Furey was Danny Williams’ pick for the chief electoral officer three years ago.  At the time of Furey’s appointment, Williams’ new release described the OCEO job like this:

The Chief Electoral Officer operates under the Elections Act 1991 and is responsible for exercising general direction and supervision over the administrative conduct of elections and enforcing fairness, impartiality and compliance with the act.

Williams handed the job to former Tory party president Paul Reynolds when Furey resigned. The news release at the time Williams announced Reynolds as his choice  described the office’s responsibilities with exactly the same words.

The release didn’t include Reynolds’ extensive pedigree with the province’s Tory party in the release.

For reasons that should be obvious, Furey’s comments virtually guarantee there won’t be an investigation into campaign finance irregularities in at least one by-election held since 2000.

For reasons that should be even more obvious, Furey’s advice is sound.  In a situation where there is a question of irregularities – especially a question of irregularities involving the party the chief electoral officer is tied to – the most sensible thing to do is call in an independent person and have them sort through the mess.

Anything else – anything else  - gives the controversy legs.

Refusing to investigate, especially using a preposterous series of excuses, just looks suspicious.

After all,  if things really were as innocuous, limited and uneventful as Reynolds claims, then why not have some impartial investigator have a look?

Just don’t look to get Witch-hunt Willie Marshall on the case.  He’s already busy with a sooper- sekrit investigation that he apparently hasn’t finished yet and the government refuses to talk about.

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Freedom from Information: another missing report by Bill Marshall

Coincidence of coincidences.

Your humble e-scribbler mentions Bill Marshall in jest in a post that connects back to the whole Ed Byrne Tory-gate spending scandal.

As it turns out, on the very same day that Danny Williams decided to tell the world about the auditor general’s investigation of Ed Byrne back in June 2006  justice minister Tom Marshall released government’s response to the Lamer commission report into wrongful convictions.  Williams had known of the AG investigation since the middle of the day before he made it public, apparently, but that’s another story.

Anyway…

June 21, 2006.

Gee.

And right there in the middle of the release is an announcement that former cabinet minister and retired supreme court judge Bill Marshall would be running a review of the Crown prosecutor’s office, as Antonio Lamer recommended:

Establishing an independent review of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions is one of the recommendations Minister [Tom] Marshall [no relation to Bill] said government will implement immediately.  Commissioner Lamer recommends that an independent review be called to ensure that steps have been taken or will be taken to eliminate the "Crown culture" that contributed to the wrongful conviction of Gregory Parsons, and was also evident in the prosecution of Randy Druken. 

"This is an important recommendation on which government must act immediately and we are pleased that retired Court of Appeal Justice, William Marshall, will immediately head up the review," said Minister Marshall. "The review will be very thorough, independent and at arms length; it will examine resources, training, morale and the systemic issues identified in the report." [bold and italics added]

Immediately head up the review but not immediately finish the thing, as it turns out.

Just  a few weeks shy of three years after Bill Marshall immediately headed up the review into Lamer’s recommendation 18, there’s no apparent sign the work of the government’s favourite Grand Inquisitor is anywhere near done. [the link in the picture is dead]
 
Perhaps the former Supreme Court Justice and Tory cabinet minister has been too busy with another review, this one of inland fisheries. 

The second one was a sort of star chamber, since the whole thing was never announced. 
Indeed, government has never revealed either the scope of inland fisheries probe or when Marshall started work on it.  Opposition House leader Kelvin Parsons asked a question in the House about an access to information request that wanted to find out some basic stuff about the judge’s inquest – like how much it had cost so far – but the minister answered with a mere two sentences:

Mr. Speaker, with respect to the review being undertaken by retired Judge William Marshall, I believe the review is not completed to this point. Obviously, the information could not be disclosed until we have the results of the review.

That, dear friends, is all we know of that one.

So now we have it:

Two investigations.

Same guy, running both.

Zero results.

Unknown costs.

And it’s not like Bill Marshall isn’t popular when it comes to the current administration. 

Way back in October 2003, the guy who started campaigning for the premier’s job in the now infamous St. Barbe by-election appointed Bill Marshall as sort of a watchdog:

Bill Marshall, a recently retired Appeal Court judge and former PC cabinet minister, will act as the liaison between Williams and departing premier Roger Grimes. 

Liberals warned against new contracts 

Williams says the outgoing Liberal government should not make any plans for spending announcements. 

"I don't expect them to do that, "he says. "That would be irresponsible for an outgoing government that, no longer has a mandate to take those kind of actions. So, I'm trusting that Mr. Grimes and his government will do the honourable thing, and I expect them to do that."

The whole thing was just another of the nasty, mean-spirited, petty, small-minded, miserable  little insinuations about others that Danny Williams likes to make, as we have come to learn.

As it also turns out, the guy who started his latest political life as the Premier’s watchdog has, in his retirement, become a sort of Tory Torquemada – if you will plant your tongue firmly in cheek – ready, nay eager, to take on any investigation, inquiry or inquisition that needs to be done.

Too bad he apparently can’t finish them.

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Tory-gate: Making wrong a right

1. labradore does the usual fine job of documenting the Progressive Conservative Party’s reliance on paid campaign staff.  Note especially the relatively heavy amounts spent in certain districts in certain elections.

Paying staff isn’t the problem.

Paying them with stolen money would be.

Paying them with money improperly obtained (but not stolen) would be especially if that money – as in the St. Barbe case – was never reported publicly as required by law.

No one can claim there were no rules this time out.

2.  The curious nature of former PC party president – and current chief electoral officer – Paul Reynold’s reliance on false information to justify his refusal to investigate the (alleged) election spending wrongdoing.

We know, as an incontrovertible matter of fact, that the election finance reports filed by the Progressive Conservatives for the 2001 by-election are wrong.  Contrary to the Elections Act, 1991, they do not include all party spending on the by-election.

That’s been established in the agreed statement of facts coming out of the recent conviction of former party leader Ed Byrne’s recent conviction for fraud and corruption.

It’s implicit in his curious statement, linked above.

Why they don’t is a matter to be determined.

Then Reynold’s relies on documents he knows to be wrong to justify doing nothing:

The reports filed on behalf of the PC candidate in the 2001 by-election and by the party indicated election expenses totaling $17,362. Even including the amount of $3,000 identified in the statement of facts released with respect to the Ed Byrne criminal proceedings, neither the PC candidate nor the party would have exceeded the legislated expenditure limits for the electoral district in that by-election.

That might be true if we knew that the $3,000 was all the illegal spending involved.

But we don’t.

and we don’t know because Reynolds is refusing to do his job.

In the Byrne case,  we only have a partial accounting of the Byrne case.  We only know where about roughly where $173,000 went when in fact Byrne received the better part of a half million in the years between 2001, 2002, 2003.  Coincidentally, those are the years leading up to the 2003 general election.  There were also a few by-elections in there as well, including the one in St. Barbe which the Provincial Conservatives campaigned so hard to win.

They fought so hard that their new leader – acclaimed the day after the by-election vote – used it as an example of the turning tide of Tory fortunes.  heck, the new leader even spent pretty much all the campaign driving around in his Winnebago campaigning for the party.

But that is digression.

We know how much money went astray in the Byrne case.

We don’t know where it went.

We don’t because the chief electoral officer is using any excuse at his disposal to avoid investigating his old political party.

He said we didn’t need an investigation because they guy that won, won a second time so things must be okay.

Now he’s telling us that documents that he knows are wrong can actually be right, as long as it means he doesn’t have to investigate his old friends.

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Two charged with 73 election finance violations

Hang on, there.

Don’t get excited.

It isn’t Tory-gate. 

The mayor of Vaughan, Ontario and her husband have been charged with election expense violations following an investigation:

Vaughan Mayor Linda Jackson and her husband, Mario Campese, have been formally charged with violations of election finance rules in the run-up to her narrow 2006 victory against former mayor Michael Di Biase.

Jackson was served with 68 charges at her home yesterday afternoon by a representative of independent prosecutor Timothy Wilkin, who was hired by Vaughan City Council to determine whether such charges should be laid under the Municipal Elections Act.

Her husband, who served as her campaign manager, also faces five charges, including accepting illegal cash contributions.

How sad could it be when a small city in Ontario has higher election finance ethics standards than the entire province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

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Tory-gate: the opinion columns version

From the Saturday Telegram, Russell Wangersky’s column:

In fact,  [chief electoral officer Paul] Reynolds defends the spending by saying that even if the under-the-table cash were added to the declared funding, "neither the PC candidate nor the party would have exceeded the legislated expenditure limits for the electoral district in that byelection."

That's not the point.

The point is how did $3,000 in spending end up off the books, and could there be other off-book spending in the province's elections?

Could there be?  A look at the information already in the public domain suggests  there was.

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Tory-gate shocker: Williams backs hand-picked chief electoral officer

What else would we expect the Premier to do but back the guy he picked for the job?

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Tory-gate: the PC party election spending scandal

1.  The Chief Electoral Officer’s statement on why he is refusing to investigate.

Note that CEO Paul Reynolds apparently only spoke with unnamed Progressive Conservative Party officials after he told CBC’s David Cochrane that he would not be investigating the matter as he felt the by-election had been conducted properly:

They [unnamed party officials] indicated that they became aware of this issue when the statement of facts relating to the Ed Byrne Constituency Allowance fraud case was brought forward by a CBC reporter, this being the same time that my office was made aware of the situation.

2.  The legal argument against Reynolds:

306. (1) No person other than the chief financial officer of a registered party or candidate shall authorize election expenses for that party or candidate and no election expenses shall be incurred except by a chief financial officer or a person designated in writing by a chief financial officer for that purpose.

So if Mr. Reynolds' assertion is correct, why are there no charges, and why is there no investigation?

3.  The logical argument against Reynolds:

Given the severity of the potential breach of justice, the lack of initial evidence does not constitute a prima facie case against a full investigation into whether stolen money was indeed used to fund a provincial election campaign.

Reynolds' statement contains 4 attempts of negative proof, otherwise known as argumentum ad ignorantiam. For a pithy explanation, see Fallacy Files: http://www.fallacyfiles.org/ignorant.html

The case against this type of argumentation is simple: a lack of evidence by itself is no evidence.

4.  Three years after the House of Assembly spending scandal story broke, the people of Newfoundland and Labrador still do not know the answers to simple questions:

• Who knew?
• What did they know?
• When did they know it?
• Where did the money go?

It’s not like someone didn’t suggest this at the outset:

Make no mistake: AG Noseworthy's inquiries and the police investigation will not root out the answers to all the questions raised by this scandal which itself is without precedent in the province for over 80 years.

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The Hobby Garden of Meh, Whatever #nlpoli

What’s so striking about the race to replace Kathy Dunderdale as leader of the provincial Conservative Party is how spectacularly unspectacular it is so far.

Maybe things will change once the Conservative Party executive meets to figure out the leadership contest rules. But so far the whole thing has been decidedly dull.

The PUB and the MFers #nlpoli

Right off the start, the title goes back to a humorous tweet a few months ago.  It went something like this:

If Muskrat Falls is MF, then does that make its supporters MFers?

You gotta laugh at this stuff, folks, because if you didn’t you’d either cry or turn into Dexter. Based on her performance in the House of Assembly on Monday, if Premier Kathy Dunderdale doesn’t lighten up, she is gonna stroke out.  No amount of publicity in a running magazine that heralds her as a “celebrity” can change that.

Frankly, Kathy should laugh at the predicament she and her colleagues put themselves in.

It is pretty funny, after all.  First  Danny and the boys at Nalcor made up this “Build Muskrat First” project over the course of a few months in 2010 so the Old Man could get out of his political career with a flourish.   They had nothing to go on except a 30 year old study, so they cobbled together enough justifications to make it look good.

And off they went.

The joint federal-provincial review was about something else, so they could  - and did, as it turned out – breeze by whatever it found.  Since the Liberals exempted all Churchill River hydro projects from the public utilities board back in 2000, the project wouldn’t have to pass through any real scrutiny.  What Danny’s successor and her crowd wound up doing instead is hand the board a reference question carefully structured to deliver the answer the government and Nalcor wanted. 

In the event, the public utilities board asked for more time to do its work.  Kathy Dunderdale and Jerome Kennedy shut them down. End of March, they said. The opposition parties started talking about a debate in the House. Jerome and Kathy said no way.

That got to be a fairly consistent Tory talking point after a while:  Piss off.  There’s been enough talk.  Let’s get on with it.  This thing has been studied to death.  More problems turned up with the project.  More viable alternatives appeared.  More credible critics and opponents turned up.  The worse things looked for Muskrat Falls,  the more Kathy and Jerome and the gang wanted to stop talking and start spending.

“We need to get to sanction,” Dunderdale told NTV’s issues and Answers a few weeks ago.

Basically up to Monday, things were moving along the government’s chosen path. Then the public utilities board decided they wouldn’t play any more: 

The Board concludes that the information provided by Nalcor in the review is not detailed, complete or current enough to determine whether the Interconnected Option represents the least-cost option for the supply of power to Island Interconnected customers over the period of 2011-2067, as compared to the Isolated Island Option.

In the House of Assembly, the best Premier Kathy Dunderdale could work up was a load of nothing.  She and her staff had the PUB report for days.  On Monday, no one stood to announce the government response as a ministerial statement.  No one stood to talk about a debate, more studies and research or anything of the sort.  Had the Tories done that, they would have neutered the opposition questions immediately and regained control of the story.

Instead, they reacted and Kathy Dunderdale reacted with stuff that doesn’t matter:

Mr. Speaker, when you are looking for a full, independent analysis which is what we were trying to do with the PUB review …  the PUB walked away from its responsibility, the terms of its mandate, to give us a recommendation. A recommendation that had already been endorsed by Navigant, by Manitoba Hydro, by the Consumer Advocate Mr. Johnson and his expert Knight Piésold, and Dr. Wade Locke. They all concur that it is the least-cost and we need the power. The PUB was not able to arrive there.

Everyone knows the government cut off the PUB from its set-up, so there’s no way it was ever an independent review.  Navigant is a long-standing consultant for Nalcor. Independent?  Pfft, as the Old Man would say.  Political appointee Johnson an independent reviewer?  Double pfft.

And Locke?  He didn’t even do the calculations and everyone knows it.

All that’s left is Manitoba Hydro.  They did some work for the PUB and turned up more problems with the Muskrat Falls project than ever. One of the biggest failings MHI found was that Nalcor just didn’t do a major study they should have done – according to best industry practices – before they let the project through Decision Gate 2.

Then Dunderdale tossed out the gem:  she will now have a debate, a special debate in the House by the end of June.  Only a couple of days earlier, her natural resources minister flatly rejected the idea.  They really are the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.

After all that, if you aren’t chuckling at least, then you have no sense of humour whatsoever.

So Muskrat Falls will drag on for another few months.  The criticisms will mount.  The government will look ridiculous and incompetent and all as a result of its own bungling, its own miscalculations. In the end, it may die an ugly death, perhaps stabbed by the very people who helped create it.

O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason.

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Will bad Tory polls change candidate slates?

Public opinion polls showing dramatic declines in provincial Conservative support might bring some changes in the slate of candidates.

The provincial Conservatives, for example, included a pledge to run again for all incumbents in the December deal that installed Kathy Dunderdale for a longer interim term than originally planned.

Before then, the slate of incumbents likely to quit included Dunderdale herself.  Finance minister Tom Marshall was reputedly headed for retirement, along with Sheila Osborne , Bob Ridgley*, Roger Fitzgerald, Dave Denine and a few others who were pensionable.

So far only Fitzgerald seems to be headed for the gate.  CBC’s David Cochrane tweeted on Wednesday that Ron Ellsworth has decided he won’t be running this fall.  He was reportedly looking at a challenge to incumbent Ed Buckingham in St. John’s East.  Buckingham didn’t support the Dunderdale campaign for the federal Conservatives and some provincial Conservatives thought they could get some support for a challenge to an otherwise strong incumbent. 

Sadly for her, Dunderdale’s gambit blew up in her face leaving Buckingham politically stronger.  Not surprisingly the wannabes are backing off.

Of course that doesn’t necessarily mean Ellsworth and other ambitious Conservatives wouldn’t leap forward if a seat opened up somewhere else.

That’s where the polls come in.  As support for Dunderdale’s Conservatives drops, some of the older hands may change their minds on the deal and take a comfortable retirement package before October. That could open up St. John’s North, for example, currently held by Bob Ridgley and another likely home for Ron Ellsworth.

Ditto St. John’s West where Sheila Osborne has been reportedly ready for retirement since 2007.  A couple of names popped up this past week of Tories looking at challenging Osborne for the nod – or ideally – just taking a run to replace her if she decides to gracefully walk away to look after the grandkids.

Ass for the other parties, people who had already taken a pass might change their minds.  Popular St. John’s councilor Sheilagh O’Leary has been rumoured to be resisting New Democrat efforts to recruit her as a challenger to Ed Buckingham in St. John’s East.  Will the recent CRA poll weaken her resolve to stay put or will it  give O’Leary the hope she might be able to trade up to a seat on the Hill instead of at Tammany on Gower?

Meanwhile, for the Liberals, Danny Dumaresque seems to looking beyond Menihek in Labrador to a seat on the island.  One version has Dumaresque tackling Lewisporte’s Conservative incumbent Wade Verge come October.

That’s the thing about polls.  Lots of people make decisions based on what they think they say.  Kathy Dunderdale should know that, having worked so closely with ace poll-follower Danny Williams for so long. 

When the polls were looking rosy for the Tories, ambitious people were content to sit on the sidelines. 

Now with the scent of blood in the air, they might not sit still much longer.  After all, if you look at the actual CRA numbers – not the adulterated one’s the company feeds reporters – you can see why Kathy Dunderdale looked and sounded so stressed when she spoke to reporters on Tuesday.

Shave off 10 points from CRA’s party choice number come August and the Tories are at 34%.  Even if you split that vote evenly between the two opposition parties, the swings could put more and more seats across the province in play.  Hand the whole 10% to one opposition party or the other and things look even darker for Dunderdale’s Conservatives. And that would be with a mere month and a bit to go before polling day.

Don’t be surprised if there are more than a few surprises in the days and weeks ahead.

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* Corrected from “Tom” in the original