Posts Tagged ‘NDP Leadership rp’
Andrea Horwath’s Victory and It’s Meaning to Ontario
I have to say I genuinely enjoyed the time I spent covering the NDP Leadership race, interacting with the candidates, party officials and the campaign teams. As someone who has been involved in Liberal party politics I thought I would have a sense of what was going on, but ultimately my experience didn’t translate because the internal dynamic is so different.
The internal politics of the Liberal Party of Canada frequently gets nasty and personal and the rules and procedures are more so tools for determining who has the upper hand and less about ensuring a fair and engaging process. Controversial but true. The NDP process is focused on engaging individual members of the party in the process and ensuring that barriers to participation are brought down. When the President of the Ontario NDP introduced the convention’s Harassment officers, I sensed the tone would be very different and it was. It was clear it was a fair race and all four campaigns felt it too.
The NDP process did two things which are important to every party. The first was ensuring grassroots participation. Using a weighted one member, one vote system the NDP allowed every party member to more or less have an equal voice (I say more or less because card carrying NDP members who are also part of the labour affiliates are part of a weighted vote that sees their total reflect 25% of the final vote). Members were given the ability to vote by mail, online, by phone or in person at the convention. By mail, voters would use STV voting to rank the candidates and mail in the ballot by the first couple days in March. They could check online to see if it was recieved, and if not they could use another method of voting. From talking to staff at the NDP party office, mail was expected to be the most popular option of voting. The NDP also allowed party members to phone in their votes at pre-determined times for each round in addition to allowing individual round by round voting online. Delegates at the convention and at home all used a web interface to vote, although delegate were also using personal smart phones to vote online and could also vote by phone using a cell or a payphone. Folks at home could even watch the convention streaming online. Delegates and media were using twitter as well to share what was happening on the floorl. An impressive 50% of the party membership participated in the process.
After watching this play out, any hesitations or hang ups I previously had about one member, one vote are now entirely diminished (although during the final days of the last attempted Liberal Leadership race, I was pretty much there). The NDP used four voting processes and there did not appear to be any technical issues or delays.
There was a sense that Horwath had momentum, but as someone who was trying to provide unbiased reporting of the convention and the candidates, I was not prepared to throw punditry into my coverage and frankly cautious about calling it for her because the unknown effect mail in ballots would have on her late building momentum. The fact that it was her home town also complicated gauging her real level of support. I thought she would be second or more likely third on the 1st ballot and win out in the end, but was surprised when she was first, even with mail ins being such a large chunk of the vote.
Horwath’s victory is important because above all she won it the right way. She was not the front runner or the heir apparent or the first one out the gate, but she is well organized and a compelling figure. She inspired people to follow her, and they did. Her campaign had a series of very high profile endorsements that they rolled out very late but in quick succession. This built momentum leading to the convention that was in her hometown (her riding even) and on the floor her volunteers were the most relentless at campaigning, cheering and being generally excited. They were younger, had a higher proportion of women and were from the labour wing of the party.
Horwath excited New Democrats and has brought an experienced by fresh face to the NDP. She has become leader of the NDP the day after John Tory stepped down, leaving the Progressive Conservatives without a leader and their heavy hitters all likely to apply. This presents an opportunity for Horwath to establish herself as a credible, compelling, competent party leader and McGuinty’s main rival in the legislature.
She and her opponents all understood that the economy was going to be the make or break for the Liberals and each of them articulated their position on the economy in a very people focused way. For Horwath’s part she tied the economy to social realities well and framed her arguments around the economy through their impact on people whether workers or others in society. An example of this was her use of investment in light rail transit infrastructure as a means of both economic stimulus and a ‘buy in Ontario’ policy. Her explanation of ‘buy in Ontario’ as a concept was such that it would be hard to disagree must past throwing out a fear of protectionism in the market place.
I have to say, I support iron ore mined in Ontario becoming Ontario steel, and that steel being used to build light rail cars in Ontario and the tracks that Ontario workers would lay to improve our urban transit infrastructure. She and I spoke about it on and off camera in some detail and as a guy who would love to see Toronto, but especially Scarborough’s transit improved, who would like the provincial and federal governments to help pay for it, trying to cycle that investment through our economy as many times as possible seems only reasonable.
You can call it whatever you want, and I too worry about the impacts of a possible trade war or protectionism in other jurisdictions but am fairly certain of two things, the first is the average voter won’t care about the impacts of protectionism if they are afraid of losing their job or have; two, single industry towns and cities across Ontario can actually be helped through something like this and those who live in those places recognize it.
The NDP has the opportunity to really build over the next couple of years as the Government will no doubt struggle to manage the fall out of the financial crisis and at the very least the NDP sounds credible on the economy and has used this race to play that up. With the right messaging and organization, Horwath could go far and at the very least is likely to shake things up a bit and add some excitement to both her party and politics in Ontario more generally.
My take is when she begins to travel the province and really take McGuinty up in Question Period, Ontarians will get to know her and will like what they see, even if they are unsure about voting NDP or maybe don’t agree with what she is saying. Horwath impressed me as someone who was running for the best possible reasons and someone who legitimately was not a politican in the traditional sense, but someone who could use what comes with political involvement as tools for social improvement.
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