{"id":2233,"date":"2009-04-19T23:13:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-20T03:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=2233"},"modified":"2009-04-19T23:13:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-20T03:13:00","slug":"you-may-now-be-seated-the-tory-race-to-replace-tory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=2233","title":{"rendered":"You May Now Be Seated – The Tory Race to Replace Tory"},"content":{"rendered":"

Friday was the deadline to enter the Ontario PC leadership race and, even though the contest has been somewhat wired for Tim Hudak<\/span>, a field of four MPPs<\/span> has emerged – Hudak<\/span><\/a> (the frontrunner<\/span>), Randy Hillier<\/a> (think right…then walk a few more steps right), Christine Elliott<\/a> (Jim Flaherty’s<\/span> wife), and Frank Klees<\/span><\/a> (Jaine Klees<\/span>‘ husband).<\/p>\n

I’ll be back at some point during the race with website reviews but for now, here’s what’s making news so far:<\/p>\n

-Stephen Taylor has interviews with Christine Elliott<\/a> and Tim Hudak<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

-Taylor also reports that Randy Hillier has proposed dropping the “P”<\/a> from PC. I haven’t seen a public confirmation anywhere, but Hillier’s “A Conservative Leader for a Conservative Party<\/em>” slogan would certainly imply that.<\/p>\n

–Hudak<\/span> has the early lead on the endorsement front, with 12 MPPs<\/span> backing him<\/a>, compared to 2 for Elliott and Klees<\/span>, and none for Hillier.<\/p>\n

-Of note, Rob Nicholson and John Baird have gone against their Cabinet colleague Flaherty<\/span>, and are supporting Hudak<\/span>.<\/p>\n

-In the “media buzz” department, things are surprisingly close – Hudak<\/span> has been in 301 google news stories, Hillier 288, Elliott 277, and Klees<\/span> 269.<\/p>\n

-Looking at “blog buzz”, Hudak<\/span> (155) tops Hillier (141), Elliott (128), and Klees<\/span> (91).<\/p>\n

-Looking at their websites’ Alexa rank over the past month, Hillier (1.6 million) and Hudak<\/span> (2.1 million) have the top sites, with Elliott (4.0 million) and Klees<\/span> (7.5 million) further back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Friday was the deadline to enter the Ontario PC leadership race and, even though the contest has been somewhat wired for Tim Hudak, a field of four MPPs has emerged – Hudak (the frontrunner), Randy Hillier (think right…then walk a few more steps right), Christine Elliott (Jim Flaherty’s wife), and Frank Klees (Jaine Klees‘ husband). […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2233"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}