This blog is not associated with the Alberta Liberal Party or Liberal Party of Canada. This blog belongs to one person with one viewpoint.Called it. May challenged for Green Party leadership.
July 22, 2010, 8:00 AM- Sylvia Lemieux has announced that she is aiming for Green Party chief. Greg Morrow is quoted in David Akin‘s piece talking quite loudly about the Green’s decline.
- Morrow, party bigwig, bemoans the current state of the Greens.
- My post on the topic of the Green challenges to May’s throne. Although, err, I didn’t call out Sylvia by name I did point out that she was the gal beating out May in terms of membership in her constituency (“… May doesn’t seem to be gathering much momentum or support in SGI, while a non-leader, non-staff supported candidate is trashing her in membership numbers.” Pundit’s Guide in the comments notes that this wonder girl is Sylvia Lemieux.).
- The convention is taking place on August 20-22 in Toronto.
I’m not too surprised Lemieux is running considering both the effort and organizational wherewithal she has. Just to reaffirm the point I made, though–Lemieux does not have the same monies, same organization, same talent pool, or paid staffers doing her dirty work. She is doing it all by her lonesome and is pounding May into the dirt, membership wise.
And a party is built on membership and including regular Canadians. She seems to be the only one building the party at the moment, along with all the other silent but unhappy-with-May people.
The Akin article linked also notes that:
The party was shut out in the 2008 election and many of the best-performing Green candidates from that election are not running again.
Membership in the Greens has stagnated and Elections Canada has deregistered 21 Green Party local riding associations in the last year.
I didn’t know these two facts when I initially wrote my piece but, well, I’m not too surprised. The Green partisans must be screaming bloody murder behind the scenes (probably like Morrow is on his blog). May, as I said earlier, is definitely on the way out.
There’s one problem though for any leadership contender: membership closes on July 22nd (today). Oops. If one wanted to build up the party with their guys, fill out all the rotten burroughs (ridings with low membership, low leadership, and no real structure, therefor easy pickings for adventurous/ambitious leadership candidates), and buoy their support for the convention’s vote on a leadership review it’s all too late.
Unless, of course, they’ve been doing it silently, like Ms. Lemieux has. It’s going to be fun watching this unfold this August.
The problem is that there may not even be a leadership convention, and Sylvie just gave May’s supporters on the executive and in the party a very good reason to try and push through the idea that it should be postponed until after the next election.
Why does Sylvie think other, much more popular members have yet to announce, so close to the convention? Frank De Jong has expressed good interest in running, yet he’s keeping mum because the resolution for postponing the leadership is still running strong.
If Lemieux and other opponents of May wanted to get them by surprise, then they should have waited. This is too early and could cost them the very opportunity to even run for the leadership.