{"id":4399,"date":"2012-12-03T12:36:33","date_gmt":"2012-12-03T17:36:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=4399"},"modified":"2012-12-03T12:36:33","modified_gmt":"2012-12-03T17:36:33","slug":"george-takach-joins-the-field","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=4399","title":{"rendered":"George Takach Joins the Field"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last Thursday, George Takach became the&#8230;I dunno&#8230;<em>54th? 55th?<\/em> person you&#8217;ve never heard of to declare for the federal Liberal leadership race. Takach launched at Toronto&#8217;s MaRS Discovery Centre, before flying to Calgary (as all Liberal leadership candidates are constitutionally mandated to do). <\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/pM77nqrQV6Y\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>On paper, Takach is likely the <em>least <\/em>exciting candidate in the race. He has never run for office, and it&#8217;s not like Toronto lawyers are crying out for their voice to be heard in the Liberal Party. <\/p>\n<p>However, Takach has crafted out a niche as the &#8220;technology candidate&#8221;, advocating cyber issues. He&#8217;s taken a page from the Brian Tobin playbook by championing the spread of high speed internet across the country, he&#8217;s big on innovation and R &#038; D, and he&#8217;s a fan of online voting. Indeed, it&#8217;s something he hopes and expects Elections Canada to introduce during the 2015 election.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/9RaH4wyIYDc\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>These issues all deserve to be part of the leadership dialogue, and it&#8217;s not a bad area to define himself on &#8211; especially if he can mobilize the often-overlooked World of Warcraft vote.<\/p>\n<p>Make no mistake, Takach is not an inspiring speaker. Even his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=B2bhEMFlDqs\">official campaign videos<\/a> are awkward. But he has assembled an impressive campaign team and won&#8217;t run out of money. If I had to place a bet at this stage in the game, I&#8217;d say Takach is the most likely candidate to &#8220;win&#8221; the &#8220;no name&#8221; portion of the leadership contest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last Thursday, George Takach became the&#8230;I dunno&#8230;54th? 55th? person you&#8217;ve never heard of to declare for the federal Liberal leadership race. Takach launched at Toronto&#8217;s MaRS Discovery Centre, before flying to Calgary (as all Liberal leadership candidates are constitutionally mandated to do). On paper, Takach is likely the least exciting candidate in the race. He [&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":[1102],"tags":[1011,1315],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4399"}],"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=4399"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4427,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4399\/revisions\/4427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}