This is annoying.

[velvetpage]

Ivan Luksic passed over for local nomination

I went to university with this guy, and was casual friends with him. He and one other friend of mine had several long talks about politics, religion, etc, etc, so I knew him fairly well. He's smart, he's a moral person, and he's worked his butt off for the Liberal party for two decades. Though he's technically unknown, he's also young and dedicated. He's worked his whole life towards a career in politics, and he did it, not because he wants power, but because he wants to help people and serve his community.

He's being passed over for the local nomination, and a candidate from another Hamilton riding (which is also coming open, ironically enough) is being parachuted in.

Now, the Liberals did the same thing in this riding in 2003. They pushed Jennifer Mossop into the nomination at the last minute, and she won, because this is a swing riding and she was pretty much guaranteed to win against a Conservative cabinet minister. I campaigned for her. But she hasn't done a good job for the riding (she's decided not to run again rather than be voted out) and I'm wondering if people will be willing to make the same mistake twice. Granted, the parachute candidate is much closer to home - she at least lives in a different part of Hamilton - but she doesn't live in the riding and she doesn't have the grassroots support.

If Ivan runs as an independent, I'll vote for him. If he doesn't, I don't know what I'll do. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the job the Liberals have done. They set out to improve the situation in education, and they're doing it. I don't really want that to be derailed in the middle by a change of government - I think the province's schools are better off continuing on their current course of improvement. I also have a pretty good idea what a Tory government would mean for education, and that scares me silly. (Yes, I vote on education first and everything else second. Most civil servants do, I think.) I know the Ontario Federation of Teachers (read: my union's umbrella federation) will be supporting the Liberals again, for exactly these reasons. But I don't know if I'm comfortable voting Liberal under these circumstances.

Comments

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

I don't know who I'm going to vote for. My family is saying John Tory is very different from the Harris/Eves-era Conservatives, but I really don't think I could ever bring myself to vote conservative--I'm too much of a liberal in most ways. I don't really feel like the Liberals have done enough to improve things (for instance, as far as I know they didn't undo any of the damage that the Conservatives did to local school boards), but I don't really have any reason to support the NDP. So I'm really not too happy with any of the parties right now, but I haven't researched my riding at all.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

The Liberals have done more good than bad for education in Ontario. The curriculum documents have been updated to be much more reasonable; EQAO scores, previously used only for making teachers/schools/boards look bad, are now being used as the basis for real improvement plans that work (and, though I have my issues with the whole EQAO system and would like to see the testing scrapped entirely, the improvement plans actually do work;) money has been funnelled into school boards to reduce class sizes across the board and especially in the primary grades; and junk food is gone from schools while physical activity is now a daily thing. Overall, they've done a decent job on the education portfolio.