A couple of interesting things:
1.A couple fairly high profile union candidates were defeated by candidates with much less union affiliation (Nicki Hakazono) and no union background (Deborah Poff)

2.Strange to see higher turnout in Kelowna-Mission than in Prince George North. Prince George North should be a much more winnable riding for the NDP than Kelowna-Mission.

Four out of the five New Democrat nominations this weekend went to women. This makes me wonder if the "lack of female candidates" controversy was a little too early in the nomination process. Once all the nominations are done, then we can see if there is an appropriate balance of male and female candidates nominated.

i see that everything is hunky dory meow,,
drop the topic ,
and newwester stop sweating,, you look silly.
nic.

I don't think everything is "hunky dory meow" just yet. However, it may be a bit silly to get so wound up about an issue that is very much in the process of unfolding.

Just out of curiousity, what is the story behind your unique punctuation and capitalization? Quite interesting.

Enjoy.

Exactly nic,, these pathetic dips think there soo
high and mighty but they hide behind there unions and pretend they care about anything but themselves.let me stop puking long enough to say it doesn't mateer what you do your party is doomed.the libs have the policies and the strong women and will embarass the dips who think we will forget the dark ages of the 90's.

So What: That's so cute! So funny. So pathetic. And not in the "pathetic dips think there soo high and mighty" kind of pathetic. Nope. Singularly pathetic.

The Kelowna-Mission battle was about as well-fought as it gets in the Okanagan. When you look at the area, you have to wonder how they got one candidate, let alone two, to stand up, but really, this is the story all over the place. People want to run for the NDP, and they've done a lot of excellent work in the Okanagan during the rebuilding process. Who knows what's going to happen.

It`s not unusual at all to see 2 fairly high profile candidates for the NDP. Considering the pathetic representation in Kelowna- Mission we have now, I`m surprised there weren`t more.

Time will tell whether this is a dead issue.

After all, the women candidates who were nominated weren't of the Vancouver COPE/Moncton persuasion. Which, I suspect, has always been the real issue anyway. Remember, they're not 'real
'real' women unless they've been officially blessed by the NDP provincial office/women's rights committee clatch.

Poff seems like a qualified candidate in winnable riding. She better have a good grasp on resource economics, however, or Pat Bell will kill her. If she's a hand-wringing, left-wing poli-sci professor who thinks cutting down trees and digging up minerals is "icky", she'll be in for a tough fight.

Hokarono and Pinsent are in unwinnable ridings so who cares.

Conroy is in a winnable riding, but will have to share part of her husband's taint from the former regime.

It's too bad people in BC lack a sense of history. North Okanagan and North Vancouver Seymour are both seats that the NDP has won in the past. North Okanagan was held by the NDP from a byelection in 1984 through to 1986 by Lyle MacWilliam, who was later an MP for the corresponding federal riding. He has since switched to the Liberals and ran for them federally at least once, and has a nice federal patronage appointment to some kind of health food review panel. North Vancouver Seymour was held by the NDP's Colin Gabelmann during the Barrett years.

Nicki Hokazono is a former school trustee in Kelowna, and is a very credible candidate. Considering the representation Sindi Hawkins has given Kelowna, and the large population of seniors, who have been impacted by Pharmacare, for example, it may prove to be an interesting contest.

Anyone who thinks the NDP are going to win a Kelowna seat in the next election is on glue. Let's get real here folks.

Living in the adjacent riding to Kelowna-Mission, I'll agree that history is against the NDP. Kelowna isn't the North Okanagan, rather Central, but in fact, the entire region is becoming a bit unpredictable lately. The federal results don't correspond provincially, because the issues are much different for the Okanagan. If nothing else, it'll be an interesting election up here.

Colin Gableman was elected in North Island - very safe NDP country.

Yes, he managed a fluke in 1972 in North Van, but the NDP also won Delta in that election.

Lyle Macwillian he was the right man in the right place to win 1984 and low and behold lost in the general election. Vernon is hardly strong NDP country. Yes he won the same region in 1988 federally for the NDP, but that says more about wierd results due to the Reform/PCP split than anything.

The Okanagan will all remain comfortably Liberal, as will the North Shore - the core old Liberal territory.

Much more likely than the NDP winning anything other than true core NDP areas is the Liberals holding Victoria. Victoria resisted the NDP for many years until the Liberals declined to nothing and the Socreds were the only option.

Bernard's sudden recollection of past history is encouraging. It makes a nice, reasonable sounding counterpoint to John English's sarcastic arrogance ("We own these ridings, ... don't make me laugh, Hokazano!" would be a good paraphrase of John's brand of politics).

The truth is that every election is a new toss of the coin. In the case of the coin toss, many people falsely assume that if a fair coin has been tossed five times, and produced no heads and five tails, then the odds in favour of heads on the sixth toss must be overwhelming. Not so. The odds of heads is 50:50, regardless of the last five tosses. In the case of politics, the amateur analyst makes a conceptually opposite but nonetheless equally illogical set of deductions. Because a riding, or some other type of constituency (eg a certain occupational group, people belonging to a certain religous or ethnic group) has for the past several elections voted for a certain party, the amateus figures that this must reveal some underlying fixed preference on the part of that distict or demographic grouping. Not so, ... it may simply be that in the past the choices were arranged in such as way as to propel that constituency towards a certain party, and if the choices are altered, so is the result. Consider, for example, Quebec in the 1984 federal election. New election, new ball game.

Budd:

My aren't we touchy today! I wasn't arrgoance, it was annoyance. I would respond the exact some way to someone who suggested the BC Liberals were going to win in East Vancouver. Most of the folks who peruse this site have got some political smarts, so batting aside the occasional dumb suggestion shouldn't be too offensive.

It's simple stupidity to pretend that the ridings in question are guranteed to go Liberal. Any riding with a large seniors population should be vulnerable to the NDP with the pharmicare adjustment. Since seniors vote in large numbers, and on balance have to pay more for pharmicare and have longer waiting lists for health care it's only logical think that the NDP has a shot since these negative changes have occured under the Liberals.

It doesn't mean the NDP will win these ridings, are favourites in them, or that the riding is even a swing riding, it means that there's a realistic if not long shot possibility that the NDP could win said ridings.

I merely said that it would be an interesting contest. Maybe Mr. English would also agree with that statement if he had Sindi Hawkins for an MLA.

One thing that should be taken into consideration in all Okanagan ridings is the amount of people who have recently moved there. For some reason, crazy lower mainlanders seem to adore the 40^ summer temperatures that regular people try to avoid. I can attest that NDP ranks in the Central and South Okanagan have been increasing greatly by a new influx of people coming from the Lower Mainland. Now, it'll change the voting patterns in the Okanagan; will it also change the voting patterns in the Lower Mainland, do you think?

Does anyone else find it disturbing that some people are raking Sindi Hawkins over the coals for her "lack of representation" when she was diagnosed with cancer? How completely and utterly shameful.

I do not refer to her ilness having anything to do with her poor representation. It was bad before she was sick.

Dumb suggestions are indeed annoying. But an assumption of electoral invulnerability outclasses most other dumb ideas for sheer stupidity, a point that John English seems determined to overlook, no matter what. In a normal year, certain constituencies can be assumed to be following their voting behaviours of the past. But what does the person with English's self-advertised "some political smarts" do when a non-normal year comes around? Simply projecting past behaviour forward would no longer be a reasonable assumption.

Voters in the Thompson-Okanagan area, who have been wedded to the Coalition since the road-building days of Kamloops's Phil Gaglardi and Kelowna's WAC Bennett, were extraordinarily outraged when Vancouver Westside's Gordon Campbell and his BC Liberal Govt proposed the idiotic and abortive Coquihalla privitization gambit. Kelowna voters have been ball-kicked a second time by a low-end proposal for a new bridge across Lake Okanagan that doesn't fit their idea of sufficient additional capacity or optimal location. Federal Liberals, like Sen Ross Kirkpatrick, have been getting earfuls on that one, and as for Kelowna voters, they are as aquainted as any other voters with the doctrine of massive retaliation.

When a town hall meeting was held in Kelowna regarding the privatization of the Coquihalla, the only politicians in sight were a number of Kelowna city councillors, and Joy MacPhail (who received a standing ovation). Not one of the 3 local MLA`s (Hawkins, Thorpe, Weisbeck) attended the meeting.

Poff is a doctrinaire lefty. She thinks that economic freedom is the antithesis of democracy.

personally i think Deborah Poff is going to win because of the fact that we women who are allowed to vote think that its about time a woman could change things in our world and hopefully it will stay that way.

Deborah Poff is a very pretty name, thats why she will win!!!!! Thanks for reading a Whyte comment.

I worked my ass off for Pummy's campaign, as I did for Cope in the city when I lived there.
Whatever, Pummy needs friends now.
Glen Bibby