When Robert Morrissey announced last week that he was withdrawing as the Liberal candidate in the PEI riding of Egmont, the Conservatives were burning up the telephone wires spinning to journalists that his decision had everything to do with Atlantic Canada’s distaste for Stéphane Dion’s carbon tax proposals, the Liberal's so-called Green Shift.

Morrissey was an Ignatieff supporter during the Liberal leadership, so it was a short leap for any conspiracy-minded observer to imagine that he intended to send a message to Dion.

And some media dutifully reported it.

But Political Bytes sought out some Island Liberals for their side of the story and heard some compelling arguments that Morrissey’s decision was motivated by other considerations.

First, Liberals are admitting they started hearing as early as last April that Morrissey lacked the "fiire in his belly" to run in the first place.

A former provincial MLA, Morrissey had been out of politics since 2000 before deciding to try a comeback as a federal candidate.

If rumours of him reconsidering his candidacy were surfacing in April, that would have been a couple of months before Dion’s plan was unveiled, or its details well understood within Liberal ranks.

One Liberal source admits that when Morrissey did finally decide to pull the plug on his candidacy, organizers were afraid he might use the Green Shift as an excuse, and were grateful when he didn’t.

The non-election call

Morrissey was nominated in November 2007 when the rush was on to get candidacies sorted out in the face of election threats at the time. But that election still hasn’t come to pass.

The on-again, off-again election call is making it difficult for would-be candidates who are not yet in Parliament. Some have spent months trying to decide whether to put their energies into campaigning now, pre-writ, so as to be ready when the race starts or to pursue their careeers outside the world of partisan politics. In Morrissey’s case, a recent business deal is said to have made his mind up for him.

Further, the Liberal spin on the Island is that the carbon tax, while unpopular, will not be the ballot question in PEI. Premier Robert Ghiz has endorsed the policy and he has been pretty good at checking to see which way the political wind is blowing before he takes a stand.

The Conservatives are touting the potential of their candidate in Egmont, Gail Shea, who, like Morrissey (only more recently), cut her teeth in provincial politics. Some online chatter even speculated that Morrissey had chickened out in the face of running against someone like Shea.

But federal Liberals are quick to caution observers that historically the ups and downs of the provincial parties and provincial politicians haven’t had much bearing on voting decisions in federal elections.

PEI certainly showed Stephen Harper no love whatsoever in the last election and Egmont may well be one of the safest Liberal seats on the Island, if not the entire region.

Conservatives looking for reason to hope have to go back to the 1970s when David MacDonald held the seat for the Tories. It’s been Liberal ever since.

Former cabinet minister Joe McGuire won the seat in 1988 and held it with convincing margins over the last 20 years. He announced in March 2007 that he would not run again for re-election.

The nomination race Morrissey won to be named as the Liberal candidate was hotly contested. It will be interesting to see what the Liberal rank and file in Egmont does next.