Mario Dumont is rising in polls and gaining praise for a sharp opening to the Quebec election campaign but success brings only a tight, nervous smile and a furrowed brow to the face of the Action Démocratique du Québec leader.
For Dumont, all that good news is a nerve-rattling reminder of a disastrous electoral past.
ADQ Leader Mario Dumont cracks a smile at a St-Eustache youth centre.
(Ryan Remiorz/CanadianPress)
Dumont's star is lifting off once again but he is desperate to avoid the spectacular rise and devastating flame-out that crippled his party after the 2003 vote and left him in a funk for months.
"I like to say that in 2003, we were the frog that tried to be bigger than the bull," Dumont said Wednesday, getting a laugh with a French expression he used to describe the heady days when his party rocketed to the front of the pack in opinion surveys before the election campaign and proceeded to implode, winning just four seats.
"It makes people laugh," he said in St-Eustache, north of Montreal.
PQ Leader André Boisclair visited a Quebec City day care on Wednesday.
(Steve Rukavina/CBC)
"But it means we wanted to be a party that imitated others. We will no longer be using our rivals as our guide. This time, we don't give a damn what the others do. We lived an experience once. We hope we learned from that experience."
A poll released this week showed unexpected results, with the ADQ hot on the heels of the Parti Québécois behind the front-running Liberals.
A second poll showed a tight race between the Liberals and the ADQ in the key region around Quebec City.
Liberal Leader Jean Charest campaigns in Quebec City.
(Jacques Boissinot/Canadian Press)
In a show of momentum, the ADQ recently showcased several diehard sovereigntists in PQ strongholds in the Saguenay region who have abandoned the PQ and its leader, André Boisclair.
"We are on a bay that makes waves, I hope a tsunami will launch from here to cover the entire province," enthused Robert Émond, a former union leader and separatist who switched to the ADQ's promise of autonomy and its general disinterest on the question of Quebec independence. He's an ADQ candidate running in the Saguenay riding of Dubuc.
Only over-enthused partisans like Émond are predicting an ADQ victory, but pundits see three-way races in several regions and are talking about an ADQ breakthrough that could give the party a couple dozen seats.
Some are even musing Dumont's party could hold the balance of power in Quebec's first minority government in modern history.
Léger Marketing pollster Christian Bourque said Dumont will likely avoid the complete meltdown of 2003.
Bourque said this campaign is so far much more professional, from the spiffy paint job on the bus to the background chosen for television cameras.
Dumont has steered clear of the vitriolic negativity of 2003 and the ADQ platform is much more balanced, said Bourque.
"It's not the education platform, flat tax, way-out-there platform of 2003 that drew negative reactions from everywhere," Bourque said.
Dumont still faces danger. Bourque said Dumont is the second choice of many voters and those professing a preference for the ADQ are more likely to change their minds than the supporters of the Liberals and PQ.
"But while his support is fairly soft, it's not the Jell-O of 2003," said Bourque.
Dumont strolled Wednesday into a youth centre with a leaky roof and a sparse crowd of teenagers sporting scruffy beards and blond dye-jobs in St-Eustache, a bedroom community north of Montreal.
He refused to talk about polls, but he was frank about the need to learn from the disastrous 2003 campaign.
Dumont said he also learned from another right-wing politician who led a successful campaign last year to win a federal election.
Dumont has announced a policy a day in the campaign, targeting middle-class voters with low-key proposals like education reform and easier access to doctors. He admits the plan is based partly on the victorious 2006 campaign of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Like Harper last year, Dumont has stuck steadfastly to the plan. While Liberal Premier Jean Charest and the PQ's Boisclair have traded barbs on Quebec independence, Dumont has ticked an item a day off his list of plans.
The Conservatives "did some good things," Dumont said. "But all positive campaigns finishing with a win, whoever organized the campaign, are models you look at."
"There's not one campaign that is our so-called model. Most of what we're doing today is the result of my personal learnings."
Dumont used the thin crowd at his Wednesday gathering to illustrate another lesson and put a positive spin on it.
"Experience has showed us that it's not worth taking apart a dozen constituencies for four days so we can mobilize people for a big assembly," Dumont said.
"They're no longer putting up posters, no longer knocking on doors, no longer doing the ground work, it's not clear to me that it pays."
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| Party | Elected | Leading | Total | Vote Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LIB | 48 | 0 | 48 | 33.08% |
| ADQ | 41 | 0 | 41 | 30.80% |
| PQ | 36 | 0 | 36 | 28.32% |
| QS | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3.65% |
| GRN | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3.89% |
| OTH | 0 | 0 | 0 | .26% |
| Last Update:March 27, 12:52:21 AM EDT | ||||
Quebec Votes 2007 Headlines »
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