Halifax Tories, Liberals hope voters elect them to block NDP sweep
Last Updated: Sunday, June 7, 2009 | 8:38 PM ET
CBC News
Liberal and Tory candidates in Halifax spent the final days of the Nova Scotia election campaign hoping to convince voters in their ridings to consider electing them as an alternative to a potential NDP sweep in the city in Tuesday's vote.
Liberal Leader Stephen McNeil joined Diana Whalen on Sunday as she knocked on doors in her electoral district of Halifax Clayton Park in her bid to be re-elected to the legislature.
“There is pressure because clearly, it’s a targeted riding for other parties,” Whalen told CBC News on Sunday.
McNeil said he is confident Whalen will hold onto her seat on election night.
“People know that it's the Liberal party that's … the alternative to the NDP in this election and that's being acknowledged in many ridings where Conservatives are coming to vote for us,” McNeil said.
The NDP presently holds 13 out of 17 electoral districts within Halifax Regional Municipality. Both the Progressive Conservative and Liberal parties each hold two ridings within metro Halifax.
A poll released last week showed the New Democrats leading the election campaign with the Liberal Party in second place and the Tory Party in third place.
Tory candidate campaigns NDP sweep won't be good for city
Ted Larsen, the PC candidate for the electoral district of Halifax Citadel-Sable Island, held by the NDP, was more direct with his weekend door-to-door campaign.
Larsen handed out his final campaign pamphlet with the hope to convince voters to elect him instead of NDP incumbent Leonard Preyra on June 9. The single-page pamphlet showed an image of a wicker broom and a sentence that reads: “A sweep means no one speaks for you.”
“My purpose with this piece is to focus the attention of voters on this reality and hopefully they will vote for me, for Progressive Conservative candidates, to bring some more balance to the legislature that is not there now from Halifax,” Larsen said on Sunday.
“A lot of voters are very surprised to hear that when I tell them that and they think about that,” Larsen said. “The point I’m making is that we need more than one point of view representing Halifax in the legislature.”
However, Mat Whynott, NDP candidate for the electoral district of Hammonds Plains-Upper Sackville, said Larsen’s pamphlet campaign could backfire on the PC party.
“The Tories have hit a new low, as far as some of the attacks that they've done and I don't think Nova Scotians are buying it,” Whynott said.
