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No victory in losing
for the NDP
By Robert Jones - June 9th, 2003
I was at an election editorial meeting recently when a discussion was held
about what would make for a successful voting result for the provincial NDP.
There was a general concensus that the NDP would accept two seats as a great night
and would celebrate well into next week if three came its way.
Now I'm a big fan of the underdog and all - I picked a Bruin in the office playoff
hockey pool for goodness sake - but even I have a hard time rationalizing 3 wins
and 52 losses as a victory. I mean really, 3 out of 49 on a lottery ticket's only
worth ten dollars.
There has long been a feeling - still quite prevelant inside New Brunswick's third
party - that New Brunswick voters are so tradition bound, so Liberal and Conservative
in their nature and nurture, that the NDP can't win more than one or two seats.
And in that view three seats becomes some kind of home run instead of the bloop
single it really is.
The simple truth is New Brunswick voters are not as rigid as they used to be.
The embracing of the francophone Liberal leader Louis Robichaud through the 1960's
by tens of thousands of anglophone voters was the first of a string of events
that has largely broken down the barriers that used to contain a party like the
NDP.
Richard Hatfield's success in making the Conservative Party respectable among
francophones and Frank Mckenna's 58-0 rout in 1987 helped destabilize voting patterns
even furthur. That led to even more erosion like the Confederation of Regions'
stunning second place finish in the 1991 election with more than 80,000 anglophone
votes and the NDP's grab of two francophone seats in the 1997 federal election.
Together they have all proven New Brunswick voters are willing and able to do
unexpected things at the ballot box when properly motivated.
And that's the issue, a lack of motivation. No one really expects the New Brunswick
NDP to accomplish what CoR accomplished, or what the federal NDP accomplished
because the provincial NDP doesn't really expect it of itself.
This election was all but gift wrapped for the NDP. The party had the leader
it needed - the respected and well known Elizabeth Weir - one of the finest parliamentarians
in Canada. It had the Liberal opponant it needed - the boyish 35-year-old Shawn
Graham - virtually unknown to most voters. It had the issue it needed - car insurance
- a pocket book gripe the NDP has a credible history dealing with. And it had
the electorate in the mood it needed. Ready, according to the polls, to ignore
who they want to govern, in favour of who they believe will fix the issue.
It was a volatile mix that might have propelled the NDP who knows where, had
the party lit a match to it. But there it was at the 11th hour barely scraping
55 people together to run. Eventually parachuting candidates even into the ridings
of Acadie-Bathurst home of NDP MP Yvon Godin.
And there it was keeping Weir close to home for most of the election, campaigning
early and openly, not to win, but for wink-wink a stronger opposition.
It was an effort that's true ambition was not to lose Weir's seat and maybe
pick up another in the Saint John area if circumstances allow it. Not exactly
the kind of thing to move the masses.
The party can't achieve a major province wide breakthrough because it won't
campaign for one. The lack of a true election night triumph - six seats, ten,
15, 30, is not because New Brunswick voters don't have it in them to give. It's
because the New Brunswick NDP can't get it together enough to even ask.
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