St. John’s South-Mount Pearl: Vote Results Commentary

Take a look at the vote results in St. John’s South-Mount Pearl in the last four federal general elections and you can see the dramatic switch of Conservative votes to New Democrat votes.

Let’s start with the advance poll turn-out.  This is really just to remind everyone of the first sign something big was on the way.

The 2011 advance turn-out was 91% above the next highest, in 2006.  The advance vote turn-out in 2008  - the year of the Conservative civil war called ABC - was slightly below the range for the two previous elections but there was actually nothing radically out of line with it.

Now look at the results for the three major parties for the same elections.

First of all, the total vote for all three parties ranges from 33,137 in 2008 to 38,567 in 2011.  Leaving 2008 aside, total vote for the three parties in 2011 is only 4.2% higher than it was in 2006.

The Liberal 2011 vote total is 550 below the 2004 result and 3799 below the 2008 tally. On the whole, it is consistent with Liberal vote in the riding going back more than a decade. The 1997 Liberal vote in the old riding configuration, for example, was roughly 12,500. 

On the face of it, Siobhan Coady appears to have managed to capture and hold most of the usual Liberal vote in the riding over the four elections.  She gained about 2600 votes during the Conservative civil war, commonly known as the ABC campaign in 2008.

The most striking changes are in the Conservative and New Democrat vote.  Basically the two parties have traded places.

In 2004, when the provincial Conservatives held back from completely supporting the federal party, Loyal Hearn held the seat for the Conservatives.  Hearn increased his vote total in 2006 when the provincial Conservatives openly supported their federal cousins. In 2008, the civil war destroyed the connection between the two almost completely.

Take a look at the New Democrat number in that election and you can tell where the homeless Conservatives went. The bulk of them went to Cleary.  Some others stayed home.  A few went to Coady, likely the result of direct appeals by provincial Conservative cabinet ministers and members of the provincial legislature.

The 2008 vote total is the lowest of the four elections and the total for the four elections is actually fairly consistent over time. That strongly suggests that new voters didn’t enter the field suddenly in 2008.  Rather, existing Conservative voters opted for the New Democrats instead of the Liberals.

That same trend continued into 2011. The other part of the change was Loyola Sullivan who appears to have attracted old Conservatives back or pulled them away from Coady.  The new voters into the system were either old Conservatives who came back or some new voting from people who had not voted in the preceding four elections.

In 2011, the NDP vote increased by 4684.  Conservative vote increased by 4539.  That’s a combined total of  9,223. Liberal vote dropped by 3,799.  Total vote for all three parties increased by 5,430.  That’s a total of 9,229. 

There are a couple of things one can say about all this:

First, there is no way of knowing with absolute certainty which voters moved where and whether the increased total in 2011 came from new voters, old voters coming back or a combination of the two.  There just isn’t any information that would let anyone figure it out conclusively.

Second,  given the overall consistency in the total votes for the three parties, it is more likely that the changes in NDP support came from vote moving from the Conservatives to the New Democrats than from Liberals or from new voters.

Third, the result in St. John’s South-Mount Pearl isn’t part of any national trend toward the New Democrats. The 2011 result came from a trend that began before the 2011 campaign.

Fourth,  since the federal NDP voters in 2011 appear to be coming predominantly from provincial Conservatives, it is highly unlikely the New Democrats can translate their federal success into significant changes at the provincial level.

The party may have a good cadre of workers. They simply don’t have a reliable pool of voters who consistently vote for the same party federally and provincially.  The NDP won St. John’s South-Mount pearl by appealing to swing voters.  By definition, they are liable to swing in the future.  What could make them swing would be a good subject for further, detailed research.

- srbp -

Change is in the air… or maybe not #elxn41

In Election 2011, perhaps more so than any other recent election, people can see the shortcomings of national opinion polls.

They may capture an overall national picture but with horrendous margins of error and often limited information about voting behaviour they are all but useless in trying to project seat counts and even party standings. It’s not a problem facing one pollster;  it’s across the board.

You can also see the shortcomings of media commentary, especially as the electronic media seems to rely almost exclusively on reporters interviewing other reporters. There was a fine example of that last Friday on the CBC Radio Morning Show. There were penetrating insights into the fairly obvious: Avalon and St. John’s South-Mount Pearl might change hands.

And even some true head-scratchers like a version of the threehundredeight.blogspot.com seat projection that had Random-Burin-St. Goerges going Tory. John Ottenheimer coming on strong?  We’ll see.

There were also coments about “splits” and generalizations about how it all comes down to the “ground game”. That’s politico speak for getting vote to the polls. Again, it’s a bit like describing the intricacies of brain surgery by referring to a copy of Gray’s Anatomy of the human body.

What would have distinguished Friday’s commentary from the run-of-the-mill fare was any concrete information on what the campaigns actually look like on the ground.

And that’s where the local story starts to get interesting.  Anyone who believes that  Kathy Dunderdale’s people will be turning out en masse for the federal Conservatives, it just ain’t so. Some provincial Tory members of the House of Assembly have been working hard personally. Some have been doing only the minimum they had to in order to get by. A few more than Ed Buckingham have done exactly shag-all.

Now that may not be what you hear if you ask a Tory insider directly but the evidence of what actually happened will be clear once polling is done.

And as for the rank and file workers, that’s a whole other story. Kathy Dunderdale cannot direct them any more than Danny could actually get the blue people to vote Liberal in St. John’s South-Mount Pearl last time.  She quite obviously couldn’t lure them back from the New Democratic Party in St. John’s South-Mount Pearl, let alone brow-beat them threaten them or otherwise produce the outcome some people might have been expecting.

This will NOT be a reverse ABC.

This very much will be a referendum on Kathy Dunderdale.  If Fabian Manning wins Avalon, it is a seat he won largely on his own.  If no other seats turn blue, the Dunderdale failed.  And if the Tory vote doesn’t shoot up to levels along the lines of what they saw in 2004 or 2006, then Dunderdale failed.  Monday could be a very bad night for Kathy Dunderdale.

Knowing what is happening on the ground will also tell you what odds there might be that some sort of NDP surge might have a wider effect on ridings in this province.  The national New Democrats have targeted the South.  It is getting money and bodies. They appear to have taken a strategy of minimising their candidate’s profile and played up Jack Layton very strongly.  If they are half as organized on voting day as they appear heading into the last day,  Ryan Cleary will give incumbent Siobhan Coady a very hard run for her money.  He might win.  It is close.

One potential factor to cross off your list:  Loyola Sullivan.  His angry old Rain Man routine simply turned people off.  His ego campaign – big round Loyola heads in front of a flag – simply looked ridiculous. 

Outside of St. John’s,  the Avalon is likely the only riding that will go blue and the NDP have resorted to names on ballots in every other riding other than the South. Miracles do happen but with no money and no organization, the orange people don;t stand much of a chance. 

As for the Tories, they will come in second in every seat off the Avalon. Certainly in Labrador, John Hickey has been campaigning hard for a senate seat, errr his federal friends, but odds are that Peter Penashue won’t be the new Tory member of parliament for Labrador.  Stay tuned on the senate seat.

Take that sort of stuff as a good indicator of what could be happening elsewhere.  In Quebec, people are telling pollsters they love the NDP. Problem is that the NDP only had the resources and committed the resources to Quebec that reflected their earlier appraisal that they could maybe hang on to one seat. Unless they have suddenly turned up hordes of volunteers in the past few weeks, they will have a devil of time turning those stated intentions into actual marks on a ballot. 

Again, stranger things have happened, but don’t be surprised if election results tonight coming out of Quebec don’t live up to advance billing.

The two places to watch nationally outside Quebec are the Greater Toronto Area and British Columbia. The Conservatives have targeted their energy into ridings  where they can turn them over and they could wind up squeaking out a comfortable minority or even a slim majority.

Change could be in the air.

But then again, it might not be.

You’ll only know for sure once the whole thing is done.

- srbp -

PC Party voted $180K for 2008 anti-Harper campaign

The provincial Conservative Party executive committee approved a motion to spend up to $180,000 of party funds on the Anything But Conservative campaign in 2008 according to minutes of an executive committee meeting filed with Elections Canada and released under federal access to information law.

At the start of the September 8, 2008 meeting, party president John Babb “made reference to a Provincial Executive Meeting in November 2006 on issues of confidentiality and asked that we keep all matters discussed at this meeting confidential between members of the Executive.”

The minutes show that party treasurer Jim Oxford  - appointed by the Williams administration to the public utilities board in August 2009 - moved a motion to fund the ABC campaign “to the maximum amount of $180,000.00”.

According to the minutes, Oxford “felt it was incumbent on all of us [on the Executive] to lend the Premier full support in this campaign effort.’

The executive passed that motion unanimously along with another motion to register the provincial party as a third party under the “federal Government Elections Act.”

 

- srbp -

Don’t step in the media spin: 2011 election version

Check the conventional media and you’ll see plenty of unfounded media torquing of what is really nothing other than a return to normal in Newfoundland and Labrador after Danny Williams one-time effort to suppress federal Conservative votes.

Take, for example, this breathless line from a posting on CBC’s politics blog with a title that talks about a “political sea change” (give us all a frickin’ break):

The big question now is whether Newfoundland and Labrador voters will embrace Harper's party once more. The provincial Tories may be on board, but the real test is the voters who abandoned the Conservatives two years ago.

Anyone who has looked seriously at Williams’ family feud in 2008 will see  - in a heartbeat – that his ABC campaign was really just focused on his own Blue-type voters.  Your humble e-scribbler has been making that point since 2008.  You’ll find a generally similar analysis from Memorial University political scientist Alex Marland in the Thursday Telegram.

The 2008 general election did not involve  - on any level at all  - a general rejection by voters in Newfoundland and Labrador in the way that last sentence from the CBC blog post suggests.

Nor did Danny Williams actually shift local voting behaviour outside of the Blue people who suppressed.  As Marland puts it, Williams’ effort would have been much more impressive if he had turned seven seats blue.  All he really did is feed general suspicions about the Conservatives and Stephen Harper.

And that’s what makes that other comment – about embracing “Harper’s party once more”  - nothing other than complete, unadulterated bullshit.

To go step further, voters in Newfoundland and Labrador have really never embraced the federal Conservatives in the current for progressive variant.  The Tories picked up three seats in 1997 compared to their usual two but that was tied to problems with the provincial government government.  Brian Mulroney did exceptionally well in this province in the 1980s but three of seven seems to be about the best the Tories have done in Newfoundland and Labrador since 1949.

The one exception is 1968.  Normally safe red seats went blue en masse as the country as a whole bathed in the gushing hot springs of Trudeaumania.

But there again, the federal vote was actually nothing more than a reflection of the brooding rebellion against Joe Smallwood.

As for the speculation about what Stephen Harper may announce on his campaign stop in St. John’s on Thursday, that’s actually nothing more than what one might expect from a bunch of provincial and federal Conservatives who are campaigning very hard for their usual, mutual benefit.

There is nothing odd or bizarre about it.  There is no shift in the political plate tectonics, no orgasmic outpourings for Steve nor any sign of an impending tsunami of pent-up anything that would clear the landscape of politics within the province.

All that is happening is that voting patterns are returning to normal.  The fact the Tories have lined up a raft of former provincial cabinet ministers plus a couple of others is really nothing other than a sign that Danny Williams no longer sits stuffed link a bung in the cask of political ambition among people who run with the Conservative Party in Newfoundland and Labrador.

And any pledges Stephen Harper makes in the province on his campaign swing?

It will just put him in line with the other party leaders all of whom have already made the same commitment to a loan guarantee for Muskrat Falls.

That project is no closer to reality, though.  The decision to double provincial electricity rates  - guaranteed- for local ratepayers, saddle them with a 50% increase in gross public debt  and ship power outside the province at taxpayer-funded discounts rests solely on the shoulders of provincial Conservatives.

- srbp -

ABC Comedy Central: The Skinner File

From the annals of the Anything But Conservative Campaign there’s this little bit of independence displayed by current natural resources minister Shawn Skinner back in 2008.

Danny bitch-slapped him into submission PDQ for this one:

Not for me, it isn't. My boss can vote for who he wishes. He can mark his 'X' where he wishes to mark it. From my perspective, I have a job to do. I'm elected by the people of St. John's Centre. I'm in cabinet representing the people of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador and I have a job to do. And I'm going to do that to the best of my ability.

If and when there is a federal election, we all as individual citizens can make up our own minds what we want to do. I'm here today as a provincial minister and I'm carrying out my duties as a provincial minister.

- srbp -

All good Tories flocking together…again

Some people seem to think that having a bunch of provincial and federal Conservatives all gathered together trading sloppy kisses is news.

How short some memories are.

In 2004, the provincial Conservatives sort of helped their federal cousins out.  They sort of helped them because – while there was no instruction to stay away – the provincial guys were trying to court the Liberals to get a couple of billion in cash.  They weren’t interested in causing waves at a time when federal Conservatives couldn’t form government.

In 2006, things were different.  Every provincial Conservative and their dog worked hard for their federal cousins.

How hard?

Well, some of you may recall a series of print ads showing provincial cabinet and caucus member gathered with some of their buddies.  Apologies for the poor quality scans.

Here’s the way your humble e-scribbler put it in the original post back in 2008:

“The guy seated on the far right of the picture is Loyola Sullivan, the finance minister at the time.  He quit federal politics not long after this picture only to take up a job with the federal Conservatives.

The guy behind him is former speaker Harvey Hodder.  He retired before the 2007 provincial election.

Immediately to Loyola Hearn's right is Sheila Osborne, part of the Osborne-Ridgley political machine.

The guy standing right behind Loyola Hearn - with that great big grin on his face - is Bob Ridgley, brother of Sheila. You will recall him as the Conservative who supported Belinda Stronach for leader even though, by his own words, he thought she was "shallow as a saucer".

Bob is now Danny Williams' parliamentary assistant.

The other two guys are - left to right - Shawn Skinner and Dave Denine. Skinner is the provincial human resources cabinet minister and Denine is looking after municipal affairs.

You'll recall Skinner was taken to the woodshed by Danny Williams for going off the ABC message track.  He was made to apologize publicly for his transgression.

Denine's had a few problems of his own, but never for doing something that went against orders from the top.

Interesting picture that, if only because it makes you wonder when they line up behind a candidate if they really do it out of personal choice or if they have been directed by some authority or other.

Makes you wonder that if they lend you support do they expect a quid pro quo, a back scratch in return.

…”

Prophetic, no?

- srbp -

Smart politics versus not-smart politics

In his battle against Reform-based Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper over Equalization, Reform-based Conservative Party leader Danny Williams didn’t have any political friends left.

Not surprisingly, Williams failed.

Ditto, the family Feud, known to some as the ABC campaign.

Senior political reporter and columnist Chantal Hebert made the point rather bluntly in her column in the Wednesday Toronto Star:

At the federal-provincial table, Williams is ultimately a loner.

You can see that very point as far back as October 2004. Remember the famous storm-out?  Well, let’s just say it had less to do with negotiations and more to do with a potential dressing down from other Premiers who had finally cottoned on to the federal transfer deal Williams was trying to finagle.

By contrast, though, Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall just got Stephan Harper’s Conservatives to turn down a hostile take-over bid by BHP of Potash Corporation.

- srbp -

Never let it be said: House of Assembly version

Never let it be said that your humble e-scribbler didn’t help out the governing party as it struggles to figure things out a mere seven years into its time in office.

Tuesday’s post on on the opening of the House of Assembly noted that there was a major bit of business missing from the news release issued at 11:00 AM, namely proroguing, or officially closing, the old session.

Poof.

At 4:20 PM on Wednesday – odd time for something supposedly routine, dontchathink? -  yet a second media advisory emerges giving “details” of the proceedings on March 22. Turns out the House will meet at 10:00 to prorogue the old session.  Then His Honour will show up at 2:00 PM to deliver the speech from the throne.

24 hours and 20 minutes after the BP post points out the missing bits, basic information that ought to have been known and released in the first place miraculously appears.

Shades of the ABC website.

Ya gotta wonder sometimes. 

-srbp-

And the cliche gets it…

Senator Beth Marshall.

Here’s the view from January 19:

Beth Marshall would be too obvious just because all the spec puts her name up right next to the two Loyolas.  She’s at the point now where her name is on everyone’s list of nominees for everything. Watch out if the Pope drops dead tomorrow.  Local spec will have Beth in the running right behind the two Loyolas;  it’s gotten to be that much of a cliche.

An interesting choice if one that is remarkable for how cliche it really is.

Others have already pointed out that Marshall very publicly declined to join the ABC silliness. That obviously stood her in good stead for this plum.

Others, however, have also over-estimated her lack of connections to the local provincial Conservatives and how this might not help improve relations between the federal Connies and their provincial cousins.  Bear in mind she was handed the plum of over-seeing implementation of the Green report and has been a faithful party player on the House of Assembly management committee.

She’s tight enough with both the federal and provincial crews to serve as a bridge. And it’s not like she hasn’t got experience in changing her tune when it serves her partisan purpose as well.

Don’t be surprised if she goes to cabinet in short order or otherwise gets a neat job to facilitate the rapprochement. The anti-Ottawa hysteria that once was the local Connie stock-in-trade will quickly be a thing of the past.

-srbp-

Top 10 Stories of 2009

No need for elaborate commentaries for this one. 

Here are the 10 stories that  - in the not so humble opinion of your humble e-scribbler - had a huge impact on Newfoundland and Labrador in 2009 and/or which will continue to affect the province into the future.

Odds are this list will look like all the other locally generated lists of top news story for 2009, even if the ordering may be slightly different.

1. Cougar 491:  A tragedy that prompted a genuine outpouring of sorrow across the province and left a mark on psyche of many that just won’t go away any time soon. A public inquiry will examine offshore helicopter safety and make recommendations in 2010.
2. H1N1:  The health pandemic dominated the news in the front of the year and again in the fall. People changed their habits and many organizations changed the way they conduct their affairs:  for instance, shaking hands in greeting was out for a while in many churches. In the end, this province wound up ahead of the country in percentage of population inoculated.  That’s something everyone can be proud of.
3. The Recession:  It’s been walloping Newfoundland and Labrador much harder than many have acknowledged and the effects of the largest global economic downturn since the 1930s are being felt in everything from layoffs and temporary closures at mines to a continued increase in people from  returning to this province other parts of Canada because they can’t find work anywhere else.  Expect the recovery to take a while.
4. Hibernia South:  So many people lined up to criticise the Hibernia deal over the past 20 years and everyone one of them turned out to be full of crap.  From Ian Doig to Bill Callahan to Danny Williams, they were all dead wrong.  Danny Williams was so wrong about give-aways he used the Hibernia royalty regime as the basis for his deal to bring more oil into production. The royalty regime hashed out two decades ago and adjusted in 2000 will pour billions into the provincial treasury. The new deal added a couple of tweaks but all the heavy financial lifting is coming via the old deal. The new deal will bring new oil ashore, swell provincial coffers, produce more jobs and set a foundation for future developments around the Hibernia oil field.  The development deal didn’t need all the hype and bullshit the provincial spin machine laid on it:  it could stand up on its own merits and garner well-deserved credit for the administration that delivered the signed agreement.
5. Double political suicide:  First Trevor Taylor, then Paul Oram.  Two stalwart Tory politicians ended their political careers  - unexpectedly - in the space of a couple of weeks last fall and in the process sent shockwaves through the provincial Conservative party. When Tony the Tory has to write letters to the newspapers defending his team’s future viability, you know the province’s governing Tories were badly shaken. In the subsequent by-elections, the Tories swept one and lost one.  More political changes may well be on the way in the run-up to the 2011 general election.
6. AbitibiBowater:  A carry-over from 2008, the closure of the century old paper mill at Grand Falls in March shock the economic foundations of the central Newfoundland town. The reverberations are still being felt. Plenty of people never imagined the company was serious.  Surprise!  They weren’t bluffing.
7. Have Province:  The provincial economy finally generates enough revenue so the provincial government can deliver its constitutional obligations without hand-outs from Uncle Ottawa. Announced prematurely in November 2008, “Have” status arrived in 2009, much to the chagrin of some politicians. 
8. No Hydro Lines Through Gros Morne:  “The argument was made, quite rightly, by people that you don’t want to create an eyesore in…one of our best tourism attractions in the province.”  Amen to that. There were other political climb-downs in 2009, but this one stood out because it was the most unusual one for the provincial government to stand on its haunches about in the first place.
9. The ABC’s are over/The End of the Ig-man: The rapprochement between the revanchist provincial Conservatives and their federal cousins happened quietly but the fact it happened will wind up having a profound impact on politics in the province.  That’s especially true at the federal level where the sitting members of parliament have already been dismissed by the national media as DW’s bitches.   What will they do when the next federal writ drops?  What price might the provincial Tories have to pay to get back in Steve’s good books?  Will the whole thing fall apart? Only time will tell. The other half of this story is the Ignatieff implosion.  So much hype; so little delivery.  When their boring stuffy academic  - and an economist to boot – is more popular than yours, you can be assured there is a giant political crisis desperately needing attention.  The second half of the problem:  Bob Rae as the only apparent alternative.  Nice guy but an aging former premier is not likely to catch fire with the electorate.
10. Darlene Neville. As Russell Wangersky already noted, this is just the latest in a series of problems with people hired to fill important jobs reporting to the House of Assembly.  The problems aren’t confined to one office or to one government administration.  The offices are important ones, however, so there is a pressing need to sort out how they are filled.  Maybe one solution would be to get cabinet out of the game entirely and leave the running of House offices to a special committee of the legislature. 

-srbp-

Kremlinology 10: Ah to be a Tory in Gander in October, when the dogs are fit to wag

When the political going gets tough, what better way to handle it than to launch a phoney jihad against a completely imaginary enemy over a completely imaginary dispute:

The Premier is gearing up for another fight on the national stage. Danny Williams says Hydro Quebec continues to try and block this province from developing the Lower Churchill, now refusing to sign onto a water management agreement for the Churchill River in Labrador.

For starters, Danny Williams is only pissed at Hydro-Quebec because they aren’t willing to take the ownership of the Lower Churchill he offered then. It’s not that they are so interested in the LC and Danny that they are blocking him, it’s really bothering him that Hydro-Quebec just isn’t interested at all.

And that’s after five years of desperately trying:

[Natural resources minister Kathy] Dunderdale told VOCM Open Line show host Randy Simms on Friday morning that over the past five years, the Williams administration “got a path beaten to their [Hydro Quebec’s] door” in an attempt to have HQ become what Dunderdale described as an “equity partner” in the Lower Churchill.

Dunderdale described the Lower Churchill “piece” as a “win-win” for Hydro Quebec. She said that despite efforts by the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador there was “no take up [from Hydro Quebec] on the proposal.”

But the biggest thing you have to consider on this water rights agreement thingy is that if the two parties – NALCO and Churchill Falls-Labrador Company – can’t reach and agreement on their own, the whole thing will be settled legally and finally by the public utilities board.

No big public, hair-mussing fuss required.

Danny Williams knows this because that’s what he amended the law to say in preparation for just such an event.

Well, okay first the provincial government tried to screw with the contract – as someone else tried in the 1980 water rights case - but they got caught red-handed in that little bit of tomfoolery.

While Williams and his ministers tried to downplay it at the time, they were caught so far in the wrong they even had to call an extremely rare emergency session of the legislature to deal with the mess created by someone’s childish legalistic game.

Anyway, that’s another story.

CFLCO not interested in the deal on water rights Williams wants?

Well that’s no problemo.

The whole thing just falls along according to amendments made to the Electrical Power Control Act in 2007 by none other than Danny Williams’ own administration.

The public utilities board – headed by Williams’ new buddy Andy Wells – just imposes a deal on the two sides:

5.5 (1) Where 2 or more persons to whom subsection 5.4(1) applies fail to enter into an agreement within a reasonable time, one or more of them may apply to the public utilities board to establish the terms of an agreement between them.

(2) Where an application is made to the public utilities board under subsection (1), the board shall establish the terms of an agreement for the purpose of achieving the policy objective set out in subparagraph 3(b)(i).

(3) An agreement established by the public utilities board under subsection (2) is binding on the persons named in the agreement.

Poof.

Job done.

Pas de sweat.

And lookit, the company involved here isn’t Hydro-Quebec, it’s the Churchill Falls-Labrador Corporation. That’s the company in which the provincial government’s energy company – NALCOR - owns a 65% stake.

And if you are still not convinced this is all yet another case of Tory dog-wagging, just consider that this evil foreign demonio Hydro-Quebec hates Williams so much and is working so hard to block the Lower Churchill they were will to sign a deal allowing energy from Labrador wheel across their province.

Wheel power and they make millions off the wheeling charges. Gee, that’s really putting obstacles in the way of the Lower Churchill. Yep, what better way to block the Glorious Lower Churchill project than demonstrating that Danny Williams can wheel power through Quebec to some other market than Quebec without any obstacles.

So what is all Danny Williams’ puffed chest really about?

Not even Ed Martin - the head of the provincial government’s energy company - seems to know.

But if one Ed doesn’t, maybe your humble e-scribbler can offer some easy suggestions on what issues are causing the provincial Conservatives to go hunting for a distraction:

- The by-election in the Straits is really not going well at all for the Tories. Then there’s Terra Nova to fight where the Tories haven’t even got a candidate yet and the Liberals wound up having two to pick from. Eight cabinet ministers in one day and four trips by the premier Hisself don’t seem to be working on the voters, at least not the way it is supposed to work.

Very frustrating when the old tricks don’t work any more.

- It’s really, really, really painful to make one decision and then be forced to make another. Think Danny Williams and the whole lab and x-ray thing. Jerome Kennedy confessed just this past week to what some of us have known all along: the decision to chop service was made by the entire cabinet.

That’s why they all stuck so hard to the line about “improvements.

That’s why they resisted changing their minds right up until the point they had no choice.

That’s why they tried desperately for weeks to try and blame someone else for the shag up rather than the people who actually shagged up.

It really bruises the ego to lose.

- And that’s on top of a string of “losses” including the Gros Morne one. Again, as much as they tried to downplay it, the whole emergency session of the legislature must have deeply embarrassed cabinet.

- There’s also the ongoing embarrassment of Paul Oram coupled with his decision to up and run when the going got tough. A cabinet minister resigns hot on the heels of another, thereby creating a mini-crisis in the government? Not a way to make the leader feel cheery. Paul Oram took himself off a raft of Tory Christmas card lists with his poorly executed exit.

- Unflattering comparisons to Roger Grimes? Lighten up a bit, people. It’s a joke.

- Let’s not forget the admission that the provincial Conservatives haven’t been doing such a fine old job of managing the public purse as they’d claimed. The word Oram used was “unsustainable.” Finance minister Tom Marshall said much the same thing.

- Then there’s the revelation that the government’s satisfaction rate ain’t what it was purported to be by the government’s own pollster. Between the opposition and local media, three recent CRA polls – never released publicly before – show that the people of Newfoundland and Labrador told CRA one thing but CRA told the public something else. The truth is sometimes painful but it does come out.

- Then there is the ongoing frustration of the Lower Churchill. As a story in the Telegram noted [not available online], NALCO has to go back and answer a whole bunch of questions for the environmental review on the Lower Churchill and that is now behind schedule. That’s on top of the lack of partners (see above), lack of markets - think Rhode Island - and the huge embarrassment to the government of being forced to abandon their original plan of slinging power lines through a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

On the whole it has been a very rough patch for the ruling Conservatives, at least from their perspective over the last six weeks and a bit more.

And what better place for provincial Conservatives to engage in some traditional Tory dog-wagging than the annual convention in Gander.

After all, that’s where ABC was born, at a time – as the House spending scandal broke in 2006, among other things – when things didn’t look all that rosy for provincial Tories in the short term.

Come to think of it, Loyola Sullivan packed it in not long after that, as did Paul Shelley and a few others.

Hmmm.

-srbp-

Vacuous, 2009 edition

Political media commentary in Canada is usually funny.

Lately, commentary on federal politics is even funnier.

Example The First:   Winston Smith makes several cogent observations which should  - among other things - put to death that always laughable Connie excuse that the news media are biased in favour of the Liberals.  Read Winston.  He’s always sharp as a tack. he’s not the funny stuff;  the people he’s writing about are funny, albeit not meaning to be laughable.

Example The Second:  the bevy of comment in many quarters prompted by the Prime Minister’s recent tickling of the ivories at the National Arts Centre.  Again, unintentionally risible.

You got your American bloggers of the conservative variety.

You got your locals of the something variety, including the line “I am growing more and more impressed with Stephen Harper.”   Now just note that for what it’s worth.  If that comment is coming from that source, be sure that there will be no ABC campaign in the next federal election.

But anyway…

There are news stories and columns all over the place.

Only one journalist so far has nailed the point about the whole NAC thing and she did so this morning with a pithy line to the effect that the piano is the latest version of the sweater vest.

In other words, it’s a contrivance.  Sure the guy plays the piano but the entire episode was designed to create exactly the commentary it is generating.

As great as that is, it is a sure sign of just how vacuous is the political landscape that the biggest national story is that the PM can bash out a Beatles tune on the nearest Yamaha.

It’s as irrelevant to the universe as the claim the Liberals are on a campaign to bring the government down or any protest that Jack Layton and his Dippers propped up Stephen Harper just recently because they could score some dough for their peeps.

All three federal political parties are suffering from a gross leadership problem the proof of which is the fact that the big news out of Ottawa is about Denis Coderre, a non-election scare and a guy who took music lessons.

In the meantime, just think about the stuff that none of them are actually talking about.

Anyone been following economic news lately, for example?

-srbp-

Voice of the cabinet minister make-over

Over at the redesigned voice of the cabinet minister website, there is now audio with just about every short news clip.  In some cases there’s a bit of video.

In the story on a news release from opposition leader Yvonne Jones, the audio clip is from Dave ‘Sentence Fragments” Denine, the intergovernmental affairs minister. 

Denine got scooped by the opposition, but never let it be said that VO didn’t make sure the CM got his own words on a story.

But that just raises another bunch of questions.

Denine’ s the guy who should have been talking about the fact the federal Conservatives aren’t delivering on their 2005 promise.  After all, that’s the government talking point to try and deflect attention from the fact that most of them bought the Connie bullshit umpteen times after 2005.

For an opposition party, reminding Denine and the rest of that fact would be the logical starting point. 

They could drag in John Hickey, the minister for Labrador Affairs who campaigned a couple of times on the bogus battalion alongside his federal Connie cousins.

And if all else failed, they’d could  now tee off on Denine and Hickey for failing utterly to hold the federal Connies feet to the fire, to use that horrid phrase.

Instead, Jones goes after Stephen Harper as if she was a federal politician.

All is not lost in the local opposition world.

Jones now has the chance to go headlong at the local crowd. Denine – obviously knowing nothing at all about the military  - refers to a bunch of buildings constructed decades ago for the air force as “first-class” infrastructure for the army.  He then tells VOCM that he’ll be going back and have a chat with the federales to see where Goose Bay fits in.

Hint:  it doesn’t.

Jones could be pinging political hit after political hit against the skulls of two incompetent cabinet ministers for building up false hopes in the people of Goose Bay when they should have known  - and should now know – much better.

Shame on Dave and John, should be her line.

Shame on Steve is just too easy, too obvious and totally meaningless locally.

People around these parts  - especially Bond Papers readers - already knew not to trust the federal Connies on the bullshit battalions. 

All Denine does in his voice clip is pretend the promise is real.

Just wait until the ABC Leader gets back.

-srbp-

What’s sauce for the Harper goose…

So the Telegram has been waiting 18 months to get the resolution of an access to information request for files everyone knows exist but the Executive Council claims doesn’t exist.

Well, not exactly.

The President of the Executive Council  - i.e. the Premier - has admitted on a couple of occasions that “purple files” are real and that he gets them to help prepare for meetings and interviews.

The Telegram knows they exist anyway because one of the Premier’s officials accidentally let it slip in an e-mail.

But when the Telegram submitted an access request, the Executive Council’s official response was that there were “no responsive records.”  That’s bureaucratese for “the records don’t exist.”

Ed Ring, the provincial access commissioner, and his staff have been working on the Telly appeal of the Executive Council denial for 18 months with no end in sight.

The Telegram editorial today raises the issue again and notes that when faced with a similar bit of stonewalling recently, Ring’s federal counterpart publicly announced he’d be using his legal powers to simply enter the government offices and seize all the relevant documents.

Apparently just the threat worked in convincing the federal stonewallers to comply with the law and cough up everything:

Privy Council staff delivered some documents yesterday, the deadline set by Marleau, and promised to deliver the rest soon.

"(Privy Council Office) has already sent several packages of the requested files," Privy Council spokesperson Jeffrey Chapman said in an email yesterday. "We have also sent a proposed action plan to the Office of the Information Commissioner outlining when we will be able to send the working and final record sets to their office."

The Telegram suggests that Ed Ring do the same thing here.  Ring needs to look at the documents just to make the decision;  he doesn’t have to disclose them.

He’s got the legal powers just to get a look at them under the province’s own access laws. 

That’s good advice, especially given the current administration is evidently breaking the Premier’s own commitments from before the 2003 election.  In some instances, the delays, obfuscation and others refusals to disclose documents are exactly the opposite of what Danny Williams pledged to do when he went looking for the Premier’s job in 2003.

You’d think that just the fact that Premier Danny Williams is out of step with then-opposition leader Danny Williams  would be enough to nudge him to correct the problem. 

But if that doesn’t work,  maybe he should consider that – in essence – Danny Williams and his people are doing the same thing in Newfoundland and Labrador that Stephen Harper and his people are doing in Ottawa.

That can’t be good.

How could he ever talk badly about Stephen Harper again  - ABC and all that - when he does exactly the same things?

What’s sauce for the Harper goose is sauce for the Williams gander.

-srbp-

The ABC campaign by Fernando

Take a good look at this billboard.

It cost $56,000.

That includes over $38,000 for the board itself, another $16,000 for “planning” and another $1,130 for “services.

The money went to a company called Promoworks, Inc, which as some people have discovered is registered to the owner of Target Marketing.

You may recall Target as the agency of record for provincial government advertising. They also did the triffid logo thingy the provincial government now uses.

Promoworks is an interesting company. You won’t find it online. You won’t find it listed in the telephone book.

The only director of the company is Noel O’Dea, the guy behind Target Marketing. In fact, the mailing address for the company is the street address for Target.  Unlike the corporate registry entry for target, Promoworks has a different mailing address.  It’s a law firm – O’Dea Earle - which, among other things, is home to the Premier’s brother Tommy. 

Now there’s nothing unusual in any of that.

What’s odd is that the bills flowed through Promoworks when, by any reasonable deduction, the work was done by Target. It’s not unusual for an advertising agency to do political work like this, even an agency like Target whose client list includes Air Canada Jazz, McCains, A & P, Irving and other major brands. And it’s not like some simple sleuthing didn’t figure it out.

Yet for some reason the bills went through a legally registered company but one without any public face at all.

Odd.

The campaign bills themselves seem a bit odd too, odd if one considers they were supposed to be advertising for a national campaign.

A single billboard in downtown Toronto cost almost half the total budget for the project, if you consider only the actual line item in the financial statement for the billboard. People who know don’t measure advertising by the amount of media coverage it garnered.  They measure it by the impact it had on consumers and by all informed accounts, this sucker didn’t have any impact on consumers outside Newfoundland and Labrador.

Even allowing for some media coverage of the billboard, the total impact of that money would be negligible in the total amount of advertising, news work and other communications coming from the political campaigns themselves. It had about as much effect as a pebble tossed in the Atlantic in the middle of a hurricane.

It’s almost like this whole thing was supposed to look good even if it didn’t do anything substantive beyond generate billings, a campaign by Fernando if you will.

There are some niggling details that don’t add up here either.

Like the $244.50 for registering the domain “anythingbutconservative.ca”. It went to internic.ca, incidentally, not something called “intonic.ca”.  Registering the domain doesn’t give you content and there’s no bill for the website design in there anywhere, apparently. None of the amounts or labels match up to that.

Like splitting the contract between two advertising companies when Target/Promoworks could easily have handled the whole thing.

Like figuring out what “advertising services” constitutes that wasn’t captured in the rest of the bill or why a billboard required $16,000 in “planning.” 

Like what the heck is an Inbox Factory, anyways? That one still defies the searchers.

Rest assured though, they are still searching, even if all they turn up are more questions.

-srbp-

Who got ABC cash?

The blood feud between Danny Williams and Stephen Harper may have netted Danny Williams something for the $81,000 his ABC campaign reportedly spent, but there’s no way of knowing at this point who really got all that cash.

Based on information contained  on the Elections Canada website, the companies listed as receiving disbursements from Williams’ ABC campaign don’t appear to exist.

On September 1, the Provincial Conservatives paid a company listed as “intonic.ca” $244 for something labelled as “website.”

intonic.ca gets a 404 page in response if you try to find its website using the logical domain.  An Internet search likewise netted zip-olla for a company called “intonic” let alone one that did anything related to web sites.

Another company – listed as The Inbox Factory – received over $24,000 for something called “TV/Newspaper”.

Try and find a company called Inbox Factory through a simple Internet search. A company that can co-ordinate national print and television advertising would likely be established enough to have garnered even a mention on the Internet.

Inbox Factory?

Nada.

Promoworks is a little different.

There is a Canadian company called Promoworks Inc.  It does custom geegaws for companies in the Vancouver area. There’s a similarly named company in Maryland that does the same sort of thing.

But a company that does  - apparently – media planning, superboard design and the media buy to go with it?

Not a sign.

More than $56,000 spent by ABC went to “Promoworks Inc.”.

Try and find any trace of that company on line.

This one is going to take some digging, evidently.

Yep.

None of this should come as a surprise though.  The Family Feud got off to a bad start, not realising they even had to register as a third party player and report their expenses.  Not realising that is until someone pointed it out to them.

Maybe people could ask John Babb, the registered agent for the Feud. He’s the guy who said:

“This is the election that could make and break relations between Newfoundland and Canada forever.”

There might be a bunch of good reasons to ask Babb a few questions about that whole campaign starting with that statement he made right at the start.

-srbp-

De-spinning the New Family Feud newser

Q:  When did Premier Danny Williams announce that Newfoundland and Labrador was a have province and  - by definition – wouldn’t be receiving Equalization any more?

03 November 2008.  Bond Papers de-spun the scrum two days later.

Q: When did the provincial government decide to opt for the O’Brien formula and start receiving Equalization again?

Well, that isn’t clear, but on November 3 the Premier told reporters that the provincial government was looking hard at it.  He said a decision didn’t have to be made until March 2009.  The Premier confirmed in his Tuesday night scrum that the province had already decided to opt to start receiving Equalization again this fiscal year, something that hadn’t been reported publicly thus far.

Q:  When did the provincial government learn that the feds were planning to cap growth in the Equalization program to keep the costs under control?

03 November 2008, if not earlier:

In today's meeting, Flaherty will reveal the Conservatives' plan to place a limit on what Ottawa sends to poorer provinces under one of its key revenue-sharing measures, the $13.6 billion equalization program.

Q:  Which provinces are affected by the cap?

Any that receive Equalization.  Ontario will be capped just the same as all the rest, including Newfoundland and Labrador, if Newfoundland and Labrador opts to start receiving Equalization again. That’s the money the Premier mentioned in his scrum. Quebec will reportedly lose approximately the same amount.

Q.  What does the Equalization formula now provide as reported by VOCM legislative reporter Cheryl Gullage?

100% exclusion of non-renewable resources from Equalization calculations.

Q.  What was the ABC campaign – better known as the Family Feud  - all about?

The federal Conservatives promised to exclude 100% of non-renewable resource revenues from Equalization calculations but they didn’t put that in place initially.  Williams went on the war path over the issue promising to work for Stephen Harper’s defeat.

Q.  How big will the provincial government’s deficit be next year?

Even before now, it was pretty clear the provincial government would be short upwards of $1.5 billion in cash based on reduced commodity prices if spending remained where it was in 2008. A cash surplus this year  - of maybe 500 to 700 million - may have helped defray that somewhat but a deficit of $500 million on a cash basis – the largest in the province’s history – was a likely figure given some spending cuts and some borrowing.

Q.  So what’s the fuss?

The Pattern of blaming someone else. It’s a stock provincial government approach.

In this case, the provincial government is in a financial bind largely due to its overspending of the past two or three years based on unreliable income.  They were warned repeatedly by the province’s auditor general. The government made spending commitments – including 20% wage increases for public sector workers  - that it may not be able to afford.

Spending cuts will have to come to keep the deficit from ballooning to unmanageable proportions.

Far better politically to blame that on someone else for provincial government problems. The facts of the situation likely won’t matter since they likely won’t be reported in the conventional media, at least if the past is any guide.

Beyond that, five years of conditioning the public might pay off.  Some initial comments – like from provincial labour leader Lana  Payne – would suggest that some knees are already jerking across the province even before the full story showed up anywhere.

Speedy Gonzales Update:  The Premier turned up on CTV apparently to make sure everyone got the story the Feud was back on:

Williams made the comments on CTV Newsnet Tuesday evening. He says the federal budget will cost his province $1.5 billion in equalization over three years because of changes in the formula used to make the payments.

"In an economy the size of Newfoundland and Labrador, at a time when they are spending a lot of money on stimulus, it seems like an attempt to basically cripple this province," Williams said. "In a time of economic downturn, I'm at a loss at why (Harper) would do it.

Words matter.

The economy of Newfoundland and Labrador is running at something on the order of $25 billion annually.  The $1.5 billion noted here – over three years – is a drop in the bucket compared to the $75 billion the provincial economy would produce in the same time frame.

A change to Equalization doesn’t cut anything from the economy per se;  it just affects provincial government spending. 

And a half billion dollars is a lot of money to a government staring at a record deficit even assuming they had somehow completely forgotten they were told about the cap last November.

Yep.

The Pattern repeats.

The Morning After Update:  Just how confusing could the Premier’s middle-of-the-night rant be?  Read CBC’s version which is short on details but long on the nasty, vindictive – and inexplicably angry  - language the Premier apparently used.

The iPod People update:  Listen to the really short clip on the CBC website. It includes the Premier’s comment that the Equalization changes will affect Newfoundland and Labrador.  Apparently, they’ll have a “pretty crippling effect in the sense we’ll survive it.”

“Pretty crippling effect in the sense we’ll survive it.”

That’s exactly what he said.

Go figure.

 

-srbp-

Friday Follies: a round-up of the week's odds and ends

1.  Pete didn't get the memo:  Peter MacKay apparently didn't hear about the kiss-and-make-up comments from his boss the Prime Minister and Danny Williams over this whole Family Feud thingy.  Speaking with the Chronicle Herald, the guy touted as being minister responsible for Newfoundland and Labrador laid it on the line:

“I think he’s just cooling his jets until his next blow-up," said Mr. MacKay. “He’s got a mercurial personality and all indications are that the next time that the wind changes or he feels offended, he’ll go off like a mad hatter again."

Mr. MacKay, who will likely end up as Newfoundland and La­brador’s representative at federal cabinet, said the premier of Newfoundland and Labrador “has lost the plot."

“It did become so irrational and personally vindictive on the part of a Conservative premier," he said.

Ermmm.

It wasn't the Mad Hatter that went about shouting "Off with her head."

2.  That's so 1960s:  Also in the Chronicle Herald, the accumulated wisdom of a few of Halifax's advertising geniuses.  Like, for instance, Don Veinish from Cossette Atlantic:

Danny Williams’s ABC campaign sure seemed to work, but I have to plead ignorance on whether it involved advertising or not.

Thanks for paying attention, Donny.

Then again, you just about prove the point you made:

People these days are exposed to the best of everything in the communications arena, including advertising. OK-ish ad efforts aren’t OK because they don’t meet the standard and tend to be disregarded or entirely disdained. Bottom line: If advertising had made much of a difference, there would be a difference today. There isn’t.

Speaking of not meeting the standard and tending to be disregarded, wonder how Don would feel about the idea of a billboard on the Gardiner? 

3.  Dons and Peelers:  Turns out that both some local bands of bobbies as well as Oxford University (as well as 11 other universities and assorted government entities) were stunned enough to squirrel away money in Icelandic banks.

4. Suck AND Blow:  New Labour starts to look a lot like old Conservatives, right down to the complete absence of logic:

[Culture (!!!???) secretary Andy] Burnham said that the "online challenge" had resulted in two dangerous tendencies emerging.

Firstly he criticized the burgeoning tendency in television to mimic the user-generated, "here's my blog" feel of much of the Internet, particularly in current affairs and news.

"The Internet as a whole is an excellent source of casual opinion," he said. "TV is where people often look for expert or authoritative opinion."

The second reaction to the rise of the Internet has been a "tendency towards safety first and the tried-and-tested, and way from innovation, risk-taking and new talent", he argued.

So on the one hand television is tending toward innovation, risk-taking and new talent by aping the Internet but at the same time, television is tending away from innovation, risk-taking and new talent.

The only challenge here would seem to come for Andy when thought is involved in his activities. [h/t to Guido Fawkes]

5. Blow and Suck:  Also from Guido, the story of a pollster in a conflict of interest.  Speaking of conflict of interest, thank heavens no pollsters in eastern Canada would do work for government and at the same time release poll results without disclosing that government had helped fund the poll on local politicians' popularity or lack thereof. 

Like say upwards of four times a year?

Nah.

Could never happen.

6.  Blown away?  A google blog search for "danny williams + intimidation" turned up two links to a blog by Paul Russell from Newfoundland and Labrador called Life, Writing and Everything Else.

They contained two references to alleged political intimidation.

Click on the link and you'll find that...

wait for it...

 

 

 

 

 

The blog's gone.

Suddenly.

Not just the posts.

The whole blog.

Hmmm.

Now it's not like he violated the broadcast prohibitions under the Canada Elections Act like at least one local blog did on Tuesday night.

Even if that were the case, the worst that could happen would be a fine.

A big fine.

But not death to the entire operation.

Nope.

Paul Russell, if you're out there, drop us a line and let us know what happened to your blog and those posts.

After all, they're just allegations and as long as they are labeled as such and unless and until someone brings forward evidence to back up the claims, no one should have a problem with it.

-srbp-

The real ABC goal

Bond Paper's post election summary:

"...the Blue Machine is a better friend than enemy, at least for other Blue people."

Danny Williams' post-election summary:

“If there had been a good rapport … they possibly could have 150 seats. That would put them in striking distance of a majority,” he said.

Ahem.

-srbp-

The NL election summary

1.  Since 1949, Newfoundlanders and Labradorians have typically voted in the majority anything but Conservative in federal elections.  Biggest thing to remember, but every single one of the media types and most of the local pundits just got lost in the Family Feud hype.  It spilled over into national reporting which was - for the most part - facile.

2.  The biggest impact of the Family Feud in 2008 was to bleed the federal Conservatives of candidates, money and volunteers.  It also suppressed the Conservative vote since Provincial Conservatives typically vote for their federal cousins.

Take a look at the results.  Turn outs are down.  The people who didn't vote are mostly Blue people.

The Conservatives got a taste of the Feud in 2004 when the Provincial Conservatives didn't turn out in any numbers for their friends.  There was no organized campaign, but there was a chill.

3.  St. John's East.  Jack Harris profited from picking up some of the Blue vote but his real surge came from the near total collapse of the Liberal vote. That wasn't ABC.  That was ABW.

4.  Avalon.  A couple of big changes in the last two weeks helped to really make the difference. 

First, Scott Andrews toned down the shrill rhetoric and started to sound like a member of parliament. He started to sound like someone to vote for instead of a guy picking up votes against someone else.  That seems to have had its biggest impact in the part of the riding north of the Trans Canada Highway which, for the most part, has tended to vote Red in federal elections.

Andrews was working hard anyway but as he started to sound more like the guy most of us know, it looks like he shifted votes.

Second, the Provincial Conservatives deployed some of their cabinet ministers and workers to twist arms. Whether that pulled votes to Andrews or suppressed Blue votes, the result was the same.

5.  St. John's South-Mount Pearl.  Midway through the election, poll results showed the Liberals and New Democrats holding onto their vote shares from the past two elections. The Blue votes sat in the undecided category.

At the polls, the Blues came out in a split between Orange and Red, with both picking up nearly equal shares.  Incumbency has its advantages if they can be understood and used effectively.

6.  Random-Burin-St. Georges.  Not a seat that figured in most people's "Watch" list since it's usually gone Red, but the story here is one of an experienced campaigner who worked hard to get the nomination and then to win the seat.  Judy Foote is a former provincial cabinet minister and someone to watch for in the months ahead.  She's tough and savvy and the two Liberal newbies would do well to watch closely what Judy does.

7.  The future.  The lesson of this election is that a divided Blue team leaves the field open. If the Conservatives can heal the rift, then the next federal election could turn out quite differently. Given the seat counts, Provincial Conservatives could have wielded gigantic  - maybe even unprecedented  - influence if they'd turned out for their friends and looked to turn more seats Blue.  They have a machine and they could have used it for niceness, at least for Conservatives.

Instead, they opted to cut throats. 

That might be too much for their brethren to forgive.  Then again, the game theorists in Ottawa might realize that even confined to a single province, the Blue Machine is a better friend than enemy, at least for other Blue people.

If the rift heals, then the next election could have vastly different results.

Jack Harris will have a time facing the likes of Beth Marshall in St. John's East.   Siobhan Coady will face someone like Tom Osborne who comes backed with a family clan that dominates the metro St. John's Conservative scene.

In Avalon, we might expect Fabian Manning to try a comeback.  He'll get some kind of reward for his loyalty.  Depending on what it is, he could be spending the next few months working hard to win back the seat he held until tonight.

The votes might be counted in seven sits, but this fight ain't over yet.

-srbp-