What a difference a day makes. Yesterday, a lot of people -- myself included -- felt that Joe Volpe was toast. Today, he said he's staying in the race for the Liberal leadership and will let the party executive sort out any "irregularities" that may have cropped up. Meanwhile, Hedy (Crosses are burning in Prince George) Fry announced she's dropped out and endorsing Bob Rae.
While I am standing by my endorsement of Gerard Kennedy and will vote for him as my preference on Sunday when the delegate selection rollout comes to my district, the moves the last few days do give me pause about my second and third choices, and how I am going to split my vote for delegate selection. Each district sends 14 delegates, and I'm likely to split my ballot 5-4-3-2; selecting commited delegates at random. I was never going to vote a straight line as I did last time for Paul Martin, but given that it's becoming a showdown between Rae and Michael Ignatieff I have to begin to wonder what the other candidates may be thinking of who to support if, as is almost certain, the convention goes to a third and even a fourth ballot. It might be better to vote for delegates committed to a potential winner than a "kingmaker," and hope other parties members are also going to hope for a quick end to the convention than an all-night marathon.
Then again, there have been rare occasions when a dark horse has come out on top. Think Edward Broadbent (NDP) in 1975, Joe Clark (PC) in 1976, and here provincially in Ontario Dalton McGuinty (Liberal) in 1996, who of course later became Premier. Perhaps Volpe thinks he could still win this thing. Stranger things have happened, and until we get the raw numbers this weekend we won't know for sure ... but I'm not going to waste my chance to vote either.
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