The 'Buzz' about Liberal candidates

Last night, CTV's Mike Duffy floated a rumour that the Liberals were recruiting Toronto Mayor David Miller and Buzz Hargrove of the CAW to run in the GTA in the next election. The same rumour is being circulated over at the National Newswatch website.

The official word from the Liberals is this: "If only it were true," a spokesperson from Liberal leader Stephane Dion's circle told us last night.

The rumour seems to have its origins in the final paragraphs of a March 23 column in the Toronto Sun by Angelo Persichilli.

Persichilli, in blue-sky mode, so to speak, is reminding readers how Hargrove enraged his old pals in the NDP during the last couple of elections by urging New Democrat-leaning voters to cast ballots for the Liberals if that's what it took to defeat the Conservatives. And so, he writes:

The NDP leader should be very worried about the erosion of support for his party towards the Liberals. Rae's victory brings the "strategic vote" notion of Buzz Hargrove to a higher level. Now not just votes, but also leaders, are marching from the NDP toward the Liberals. Many New Democrats might be tired of seeing their party being the conscience of Canadians between elections who then send the Liberals or Conservatives into power when the actual election comes.

The only thing missing to close the circle would be an announcement from two former NDP bigwigs that they were running for the Liberals: CAW president Buzz Hargrove in Toronto-Danforth, challenging Layton, and the mayor of Toronto, David Miller, as a Liberal candidate in Trinity-Spadina (against Olivia Chow).

And then, bingo, the takeover of the Liberal Party is a done deal.

So, that's all it takes these days, it seems to start rumours on Parliament Hill: the last couple of paragraphs in a Toronto Sun column. Nonetheless, I'm sure we'll be checking them out more today, just in case, with Hargrove and Miller themselves.

Update: A senior Liberal has also this morning pointed out another flaw in the Persichilli scenario. There is already a nominated Liberal candidate in Trinity-Spadina. His name is Tony Ianno, the man who held that riding from 1993 to 2006 and the former minister of state for families and caregivers.

Comments

[Wascally Wabbit]

Ms. Delacourt - You (and clearly Angelo Persichilli) forget that the "Unite the Left" strategy was flown like some tattered kite, when the Cretien / Martin imbroglio had split the Liberal Party (letting the Harper neo-cons slide up the middle) and clearly some reconciliation was needed if the Right was ever to be booted from power.
It was rejected summarily by the Dipper leadership then and will be again.
Hargrove and (to a lesser extent Miller) are renegades as far as the core of the party is concerned..Hargrove - for his pragmatism in industrial relations in a shrinking auto economy, and for his musings on strategic voting - Miller - because having real power as mayor required descending from the La La Land of the pure principles that the core Dippers hug to their chests like some favourite Teddy Bear.
Stephane Dion (with good advice from among others - Tom Axworthy comes to mind) has looked at the Uniting the Left scenario with the Greens.
Frankly, if some coalition was struck that brought that 8% of Green votes into a Left Bloc, he'd have the chance of a very lucid speaker in Elizabeth May (a woman to boot) in his caucus (or even Cabinet - why not as Environment Minister?) and a mere sprinkling of other Green MPs to have to manage...
Now - if only Dion would publish Red Book #3 so that the voting public could really examine the policy alternatives and forget all this personality politics...

[Kevin Logan]

This whole thing is a result of the absence of the much needed debate about the future of our Country.

If such antics are required to forward the agenda that will see the defeat of the Harper government then so be it.

One thing is clear, Canadians are, on the whole, a center-left political consciousness and our current government is not.

Something has gotta break in order to realign the Country with it's moral compass and better reflect Canadian values at home and throughout the world.

We are now teetering on the brink of the end of Canada as we formally understood it and such rumour and innuendo is simply a result of this fact.