Living in the west end of St. John’s out by working dairy farms you get used to the smell of cow manure and chicken crap.
Nothing however, compares to the hum coming off Jack Harris and Ryan Cleary who’ve been running around claiming that their victories in the federal election will translate into provincial gains.
A left-wing wave that is sending two St. John's New Democrats to Ottawa could keep rolling into the Newfoundland and Labrador election this fall, a re-elected MP says.
"Something that I believe firmly is that most Newfoundlanders and Labradorians actually have the same values and the same idea of what government should be about as New Democrats," St. John's East MP Jack Harris told CBC News.
Okay.
So for that to be true, people who usually and steadfastly vote for provincial Conservatives and who readily switch parties federally would have to abandon decades of practice.
Every single seat on the northeast Avalon – which Cleary and Harris as members of parliament in Ottawa - is a Tory seat and has been for seven years.
The NDP won Cleary’s seat by getting switch voters to switch.
D’uh!
You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure it out.
But here’s a second check on Harris’ prediction. Jack won his riding handily in 2008. Again, massive Conservative vote switching, plus people who abandoned the Liberals at the same time.
There have been two provincial by-elections in Harris’ riding since then. Both went to the provincial Conservatives by embarrassingly gigantic margins. Jack Harris’s victory in 2008 and his electoral machine had zero discernable impact anywhere at the provincial level.
Now there are reasons for that we’ll get into for another post.
For now let’s just say that Jack and Ryan have a talking point that just laughable. Doesn’t matter though. The boys have their work cut out for them in Ottawa so they’ll be a bit pre-occupied come the fall to try and live up to their predictions.
- srbp -