For a gang eager to bring on the election both the Conservatives and the New Democrats seem to be having an extraordinarily hard time of finding people to stand for election carrying the party colours.
In Newfoundland and Labrador, the Dippers have three candidates out of seven nominated and no one is even showing the slightest hint of interest in carrying the Orange banner into another giant bonfire of failure at the end.
Making it doubly hard this time: Jack Layton's comments that people shouldn't vote for third place candidates in order to stop the Harperites from taking a seat.
Over in the Land of Con, the Blue Machine is missing a few candidates as well. They managed to browbeat, cajole and otherwise sucker Fabe Manning into taking on the task in Avalon. Some guy turned up today on the province's west coast willing to back Stephen Harper against Gerry Byrne. (My money is on Byrne, by quite a bit.)
The other seats are all blank spots for the Conservatives.
Meanwhile in St. John's both their candidates are the incumbents, provincial Conservative retreads who first campaigned in the 1970s and who first got elected to the provincial legislature in the mid 1980s.
So far, there's no repeat of last time though.
The Connies were so desperate to find someone to run against John Efford that the ever dyspeptic John Crosbie threatened to take a run at the nomination. The guy who should have run there - Loyola Hearn lives in Renews, in the southern Avalon - decided he wanted a safe seat and decided to run in St. John's.
Word is that Crosbie's wife Jane put a stop to the old boy's musing.
Would that she had done that in 1975.