Random Access

Watch for a jump in the local “None of the Above” vote in next Wednesday’s provincial election.
It seems to me that you will see an increase in the vote for both the NDP, which only got 10 per cent in one of the local ridings (Bramalea-Gore-Malton) last time around and for the Green Party, whose highest total was 2.8 per cent in the same riding.
It is not that these so-called “alternative parties” have run particularly great campaigns, it’s more like the charismatically-challenged duo of Dalton McGuinty and John Tory has left a lot of people under-impressed and looking for a place to park their votes.
Although it is hard to believe now, the NDP was actually a significant force in local ridings until Bob Rae got elected in the huge upset of 1990. People forget that in 1975, Reverend David Busby came within a couple of hundred votes of winning in Mississauga North and was even declared the winner, prematurely, by CTV News.
When Rae won, the NDP vote took 34 per cent of the vote in Mississauga North (where some guy named John Snobelen collected 24 per cent for the Tories), 29 per cent in the West and East and 23 per cent in the South. The party was second in each riding.
How long ago and far away that seems now. Strategic voting in 1999 and 2003 by NDP voters who would rather vote Liberal than see an extension of Mike Harris’ reign all but wiped out the social democrats in these parts.
The party probably has been the home to the most energetic campaign in Mississauga this time around, that of Shaila Kibria in Mississauga-Erindale. She was rewarded by having her home-away-from-home at UTM selected as the site of Wednesday’s local rally where leader Howard Hampton rallied the troops.
Meanwhile the Greens benefited from having leader Frank de Jong (who is running against Mississaugan and former Dufferin-Peel Chair Peter Ferreira in Toronto Davenport) in town for the Mississauga Matters debate. He was the only party leader who attended and helped the City save face with his presence and helped his party’s fortunes with a solid performance, even if he talked over the heads of his audience on occasion.
Part of the Green’s problems is that many of their candidates have very low community profiles.
It was refreshing to hear the Green candidate in the South, David Johnston, say in his concluding remarks at an all-candidates’ Wednesday that, “I will be around for the next four years whether I am elected or not. I will be representing you, regardless, but I would appreciate your vote.”
Nowhere is the problem of divided non-loyalties more evident than in the South. One veteran Tory, still feeling betrayed by Tim Peterson’s decision to cross the floor, told me today that, “I don’t want to vote for Peterson but I don’t want to vote for McGuinty either.” So what does that leave?
Parking a vote with a third party is tempting in principle, but difficult to do in practice for many voters. Once it is just you, a stubby little pencil and your conscience behind a cardboard privacy wall, old habits are hard to break.
Choosing between Tweedle-Dalton and Tweedle-Tory does make it easier.