Greens' top priority: Commons seat for leader
Last Updated: Sunday, August 22, 2010 | 9:46 AM ET
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Green Party Leader Elizabeth May says she will run in the next federal election in a riding where she has a better chance of winning, with the party making a Commons seat its top priority.
In the 2008 general election, May battled Defence Minister Peter MacKay in Nova Scotia's Central Nova riding and lost to the high-profile cabinet minister by 5,600 votes.
Many political observers described her choice of a riding as self-defeating. MacKay has held Central Nova since 1997.
At the Greens' national convention in Toronto on Saturday, May said winning a seat in the House of Commons will be her party's top priority in the next election.
"The party has a fully prepared campaign plan. The party has made priority decisions around, for instance, that getting the leader elected is the top priority. It had not even been on a list of priorities that the leader getting elected had any particular importance, so this is a big change for us," she said.
In an online vote before the convention, members voted 74.3 per cent to eliminate the fixed term for leaders. In a separate online vote, 85 per cent voted in favour of a motion to support May's leadership.
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