{"id":3132,"date":"2011-09-09T17:31:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-09T21:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=3132"},"modified":"2011-09-09T17:31:00","modified_gmt":"2011-09-09T21:31:00","slug":"the-race-for-stornoway-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=3132","title":{"rendered":"The Race for Stornoway"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The rules have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thestar.com\/news\/canada\/politics\/article\/1051483--ndp-will-choose-new-leader-in-toronto-next-march?bn=1\">been set<\/a>. The NDP will select their next leader March 24th in Toronto. The entry fee will be $15,000, with a $500,000 spending limit. It will be one-member-one-vote, and unions will no longer receive a set percentage of the vote.<\/p>\n<p>Not that I would want the job, but were I in charge of the rules, I would have chosen Montreal as the location, to build on NDP momentum in Quebec. I also would have weighted votes by riding, to encourage candidates to sell memberships outside traditional NDP strongholds.<\/p>\n<p>But on the whole, I think the executive did a fine job. The timeline strikes the right balance, and ending the special status for unions is a key step for the NDP as it tries to remake itself into a more mainstream party.<\/p>\n<p>So who will win?<\/p>\n<p>Well, the March vote means Thomas Mulcair will <a href=\"http:\/\/calgarygrit.blogspot.com\/2011\/09\/and-on-7th-day-mulcair-gave-media.html\">grace the NDP race with his presence<\/a>. Mulcair is no doubt the favourite, but given the bleak NDP membership totals in Quebec, he has his work cut out for him. It likely doesn&#8217;t help that no one inside or outside the party seems to like him personally, either.<\/p>\n<p>Brian Topp has been named as a frontrunner since the day Layton died, so I&#8217;d expect him to run, and contend. Odds are Francoise Boivin, Anne McGrath or Megan Leslie will run to ensure a strong female candidate. Pat Martin has said he&#8217;s in, to provide comic relief.<\/p>\n<p>But if you put the Vegas odds in front of me, my money would be on Peter Julian or Paul Dewar right now. Lesser known MPs, but well-liked within the party and both possessing at least a pinch of experience and talent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The rules have been set. The NDP will select their next leader March 24th in Toronto. The entry fee will be $15,000, with a $500,000 spending limit. It will be one-member-one-vote, and unions will no longer receive a set percentage of the vote. Not that I would want the job, but were I in charge [&hellip;]<\/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\/3132"}],"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=3132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}