Month: November 2006

This is great…

This is for all of you political “what-if” speculators…

No room for Reds in Morton’s Tories
Tom Olsen, Calgary Herald
Published: Tuesday, November 07, 2006

If you’re worried about the state of democracy in Alberta, elect Ted Morton. Not because he has a package of refreshing democratic reforms — all the contenders in the Tory leadership race have that.

Nope, elect Ted because if Morton wins the race to lead Alberta’s Progressive Conservatives, there will be a Red Tory exodus from the party.

The constituency which Morton derides as “liberal lite” will look for another political home. They’ll find it, maybe, in a new centrist conservative party, or perhaps with Kevin Taft‘s Alberta Liberals, who will make themselves more palatable by tightening up on the fiscal restraint.

Olsen continues…

Liberal boss Taft, by contrast, says a win for Morton is a victory for Alberta’s Grits.

“There would be a larger opposition in the legislature, absolutely,” said Taft. “And it would be led by Ted Morton.”

So, the U.S. mid-term elections are tomorrow and in celebration of the greatest democracy ever to exist on this fair planet of ours, I’m going to lay down some solid hard predictions on some of the Senate races up for grabs tomorrow on Tuesday the 7th of November this 2006.

My predictions:

House of Representatives
Democratic – 225
Republican – 210

Senate
Republican – 50
Democratic – 48
Independent – 2 (Joe Lieberman in Connecticut, and Bernie Saunders in Vermont)

Here are some of the serious races in the Senate with my predictions…

Arizona
x-Jon Kyl (R) – 56%
Jim Pederson (D) – 42%

Connecticut
x-Joe Lieberman (I) – 51%
Ned Lamont (D) – 43%
Alan Schlesinger (R) – 6%

Maryland
Ben Cardin (D) – 57%
Michael Steele (R) – 43%

Minnesota
Amy Klobuchar (D) – 62%Mark Kennedy (R) – 38%

Missouri
Claire McCaskill (D) – 49%
x-Jim Talent (R) – 48%

Montana
Jon Tester (D) – 50%
x-Conrad Burns (R) – 48%

New Jersey
x-Robert Menendez (D) – 52%
Tom Kean Jr. (R) – 48%

Ohio
Sherrod Brown (D) – 53%
x-Mike DeWine (R) – 47%

Pennsylvania
Bob Casey (D) – 55%
x-Rick Santorum (R) – 45%

Rhode Island
Sheldon Whitehouse (D) – 53%
x-Lincoln Chafee (R) – 47%

Tennessee
Bob Corker (R) – 52%
Harold Ford Jr. (D) – 48%

Virginia
x-George Allen (R) – 51%
James Webb (D) – 49%

Washington
x-Maria Cantwell (D) – 57%
Mike McGavick (R) – 43%

How far am I close or off the mark? I’m looking forward to finding out tomorrow night!

Just as Michael Ignatieff did last week, on Friday Alberta PC leadership candidate Mark Norris had the opportunity to meet me. It was an interesting encounter at Hudson’s near the U of A Campus. Mark Norris was having a very well attended hockey night at the bar, which I unintentionally stumbled upon.

For those of you not familiar with Mark Norris’ political history, here’s the skinny. In 1992, Norris was a key top-player in Ralph Klein’s Alberta PC leadership campaign against then-Nancy Betkowski. Nine years later in 2001, Norris ran against and defeated then-Alberta Liberal leader Nancy MacBeth (formerly Betkowski) in Edmonton McClung.

From 2001 to 2004, Mark Norris was Alberta’s Economic Development Minister, a position in which he grew a substantially noticeable ego. In 2004, Norris’ team ran a slow and lackluster re-election campaign in Edmonton McClung. Norris was defeated by Liberal Mo Elsalhy. Now, with no seat in Alberta’s Legislative Assembly, he’s running to be leader of the Alberta Progressive Conservatives.

So, now my thoughts… Norris is a campaigner. No doubt. He’s homey and he’s doing a decent job in trying to mirror Ralph Klein’s campaign style and mannerisms and he’s fairly good at it. I actually had a decent five minute chat with him and I surprisingly didn’t disagree with all of what he had to say.

Now to one of the more interesting parts of the evening (other than the giant Hummer with Mark Norris’ face on the side). When I first approached Norris, I overheard a nice conversation he was having with what appeared to be some large members of Edmonton’s Polish community (or the “Polish mafia” as they referred to themselves). There was a lot of talk about Dinning’s apparent support within “the Polish mafia,” “Church blah blah blah” and “who’s gonna take out Lukaszuk?”

It may just be me, but I don’t think they were talking about taking Lukaszuk out to Dairy Queen…

I think Jim Dinning might have just made his YouTube debut… I can’t tell…

I know it’s been said that Canadian political techniques tend to be 5-10 years behind the Americans, but can anyone explain what the heck that was?