Every day can bring them one step closer #nlpoli

Liberal supporters in the province elected Dwight Ball as the new party leader in voting that ended on Sunday.

By the time this appears on Monday morning, you will likely have heard most of the obvious comments. You will also have heard or read about how this leadership contest staked up against others across Canada for things like percentage of turnout compared to eligible voters or to the population as a whole.

It’s pretty impressive by any count and certainly gives the Liberal Party not merely a solid foundation but a legitimate one on which to build.  None of the other parties in the province can say they have had such a leadership contest or attracted as much attention  from ordinary Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.

Now that Dwight is the elected leader, he has a job ahead of him to make sure the party is ready to win the next election.  Here are some thoughts.

Cathy’s Curious Campaign Kicker #nlpoli

With voting set to begin in the Liberal leadership campaign, Cathy Bennett took out newspaper ads that have stirred up a bit of controversy.

On the face of it, they endorse the local Liberal member of the House of Assembly.  The one at right appeared in the Western Star on Wednesday.  It’s about interim opposition leader Eddie Joyce.

Right up until the point where the ad says that Cathy looks forward to working with Ed and asks for “your vote for Liberal leader.”

Quite a few people found the ads curious because the entire caucus  - except for leadership candidate Jim Bennett - has already publicly endorsed Dwight Ball.

The real Liberal Renewal #nlpoli

Cathy Bennett launched a 48-day tour of the province last week as part of her bid for the Liberal leadership.

The local media dutifully attended but the story didn’t make the news in any major way.  That’s partly because Bennett and the other Liberal candidates have been traveling around the province pretty much since Day One of the campaign.  That’s also partly because Bennett launched the same day the story broke of Jerome Kennedy’s imminent resignation.

All the same, the launch event was news not in itself, necessarily, but for what it means in a wider context.

Politics and car mirrors #nlpoli

So not the same thing.

If the party releases the numbers, we’ll know the actual number of people who have signed up to vote in the Liberal leadership once the party has gone through all the forms and deleted the duplicates, triplicates, and the various fakes.  We’ll also know how many signed up as supporters – with no financial or other real ties to the party – and how many signed on as members.

In the meantime, a couple of the campaigns released their own numbers on how many people they signed up.  The Paul Antle camp is claiming around 10,500, while presumptive front-runner Dwight Ball’s team is claiming 15,000. 

At a staged media event, Cathy Bennett didn’t offer reporters any numbers of her own to reporters.  Bennett just said she wasn’t worried about 10,000 or more supposedly signed by her rivals.  Ok.  She’s focused on launching a tour that was in no way just more of the same travelling around thing she’s been doing since July but this time dolled up for a staged media event.  Fair enough.

Values and Ideas #nlpoli

“Don’t question my values,” Cathy Bennett warned one her fellow candidates in the Liberal leadership, “and I won’t question yours.”

The other candidate in that part of the debate wasn’t questioning her values.  He just asked, as many have wondered, about the time over the past decade when she was giving money to the ruling Conservatives and holding an appointment only given to the most trusted associates of the current Premier and her predecessor.

On the face of it, that record doesn’t jive with Bennett’s talking point that she has always been a Liberal.  So the other candidates kept bringing the issue up.  Bennett’s usual response has been to recite the obviously suspect claim  - I have always been a Liberal, even when I was a Tory - that brings you back to the perpetually unanswered question. 

When she isn;t doing that, Bennett has tossed out the sort of aggressive reply like the one about values that doesn’t fit either.  Not only was the question about facts not values, but you’d think that as a rule a political leadership candidate would welcome the chance to talk about her values.  It’s a soft pitch to knock out of the park. Yet Bennett clearly didn’t want to get into any discussion about facts or values.

Like we told you: no money rules for Liberal Leadership #nlpoli

SRBP told you on July 18 and this past Saturday, the Telegram had a front page story telling us that the Liberal leadership campaign has no financial rules.

James McLeod’s piece added the views from the individual candidates.  Only Danny Dumaresque plans to release any details on who gave him money and how much they gave.  The best the others will do is tell us how much they raised in total or list the individual amounts, but without indicating who gave the money.

Frankly, the campaigns and the candidates can claim anything they want.  In the absence of an independently verified set of financial statements, their claims, promises, and commitments are meaningless.

Moments from the Liberal Debate #nlpoli

Here are some quick observations from the Thursday night Liberal leadership debate on VOCM:

Stay the Course, Choose Change, and the Liberal Alternative #nlpoli

Identifying supporters is only part of the challenge in a political campaign.  That’s basically what the five candidates in the Liberal leadership contest are doing when they sign people up to vote in November. It’s a lot tougher a job than some people apparently thought.

One of the big factors in any political campaign is the candidate’s stump speech.  The name comes from the days when a candidate would go from town to town and stand on the nearest raised platform – including a tree stump – to tell whatever crowd gathered why they should vote for him. 

These days you might call it the vote proposition or the strategic message. The simpler the statement the better.  People remember short, clear ideas like Nike’s “Just do it” or Coke’s “It’s the real thing.”  Former Conservative cabinet minister Shawn Skinner used a variation on that second term when he labelled leadership candidate Cathy Bennett’s message – choose change – “strategic” during a recent discussion with the On Point political panel.

What Bennett’s campaign really shows is something else.

You got cash? They’ve got a party. #nlpoli

The party that brought the province its first and only election finance law in 1991 is currently in the midst of a campaign to select its own leader, but the race has absolutely no rules of any kind on campaign financing.
The Liberal Party’s constitution and 2013 leadership rules are absolutely silent on campaign finances except for setting the $20,000 entrance fee every candidate had to offer up to enter the race.

Candidates are free to spend as much as they want in any way they want without any rules requiring disclosure to anyone. 

And any potential donor – individual or corporation – from anywhere on the planet can give as much as they want to the person who will lead the party after the election and who could well wind up running the province in 2015.

Antle changes dynamics of Liberal leadership race #nlpoli

Last November, it was easy to dismiss Paul Antle as another potential Liberal leadership candidate who lots of people talked about but who sounded more like he had better things to do.

Two things in July changed that.

First, Antle raced around at the last minute and joined the leadership race.

Second, and more importantly, Antle delivered the best campaign kick-off of the lot.

Paul Antle’s Opening Shot #nlpoli

Here’s the e-mail that’s making the rounds:

I am running for Leader of the Liberal Party of Newfoundland and Labrador. I have no confidence in the current government. We've come too far to go backwards. I love this place and I understand its DNA. Our province has no leadership. That's about to change.

Please join me for the launch of my Liberal Leadership Campaign on Thursday, July 11th, 12:00 noon.

Manuels River Hibernia Interpretation Centre//7 Conception Bay Highway//Conception Bay South, Newfoundland [sic]//A1W 3A2

Paul

-srbp-

Great Political Quotes: Tax Shelter edition #nlpoli

“We lost, but that passion for fighting the injustice of a retroactive law change — that passion I will bring to the Liberal Party of Newfoundland and Labrador, and to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador…”

Liberal leadership hopeful Paul Antle

CBC reported on Friday that a “Federal Court of Appeal judge ruled in 2010 that a trust set up in the Caribbean by the wife of Liberal leadership candidate Paul Antle was a ‘sham’ used to incorrectly shield [sic] more than $1 million from capital gains taxes.”

That sounds like a great campaign slogan:

Paul Antle:  fighting for tax shelters

His team has their work cut out for them.

-srbp-

The Campaign Starts… #nlpoli

Okay anyone who believed Cathy Bennett was “thinking about it” over the weekend know that she was already getting her Liberal leadership campaign in gear.  She’ll be launching later on Wednesday morning.

You see, as much as some people might fancy that her media line was true, you just can’t get a campaign website organized and a leadership launch event with all the bells and whistles done in two days.  Well, you can.  The problem is that it would look like Jim Bennett’s announcement in Corner Brook on the Friday before the Canada Day long weekend: not a serious or well financed contender.

Cathy Bennett is the opposite.  She’s serious and she’ll have money. Most likely, Cathy will wind up sparring directly with Dwight Ball for the job. Danny Dumaresque  - who launched on Tuesday - will give a brave show but both he and Jim will drop off after the first ballot come November.

For all that, at the start of the campaign, each one of the contenders will face some common issues, problems, or challenges. Here are a few.

The Crucible #nlpoli

If the Conservative Party in Newfoundland and Labrador threw out people who had been a Liberal or a New Democrat before, there wouldn’t be enough people left in it to have a game of cards.  Pretty well all the old Tories from the 1970s who rose to any prominence started out life as Liberals.

John Crosbie?

Alex Hickman?

Brian Peckford?

Tom Rideout?

All good Liberals once.

Lately, you could even add Ross Wiseman to the list of former Liberals who are now Conservatives.

Water and beans #nlpoli

You don’t make the kind of telephone calls Cathy Bennett has been making if you aren’t already headed toward an announcement you will go after a political party leadership.

What CBC got was the talking point, nothing more.

What NTV got was the talking point, written down.

Bennett has been calling Liberals like Dwight Ball and Siobhan Coady plus a raft of others.  She’s been looking for support in some cases and in other cases, she has been inviting people to join her campaign team.  That’s not what you do if you are still pondering the possibilities a week before the nomination deadline. 

If Bennett is still on the fence about a run for the Liberal leadership, then Ed Martin is still iffy on Muskrat Falls.

Cathy Bennett to seek Liberal leadership #nlpoli

SRBP expects that Cathy Bennett, chair of the Bennett Group of companies, will announce her bid for the provincial Liberal leadership next week.

 

More to follow…

-srbp-

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