Saturday 21 January 2012

Elizabeth May, MP

Elizabeth won her seat fair and square.  She gets called a "silly woman" who "froths" and ought to move to Papua New Guinea.  But she won the voters support in Saanich - Gulf Islands by a solid margin.

My wife met her at the Newcomers club and heard her speak.  "Gregarious,  a good-speaker and passionate".   We both heard her at an all-candidates forum.  She was all those things, to which I will add "thinks on her feet" and "well-networked".  She had cherry-picked the riding, but why not?  The crowd cheered her the most.  She also had the outsider advantage.  Some of the goofier stuff, like wi-fi damaging brains, is quite popular around here.

The incumbent, Gary Lunn, got my vote. He was a cabinet member and is a good speaker, (handsome), well-informed, well-networked and comfortable with responsibility.   Nonetheless, if Gary and Elizabeth were competing television shows, you'd pick her's for the action and laughs.

 
              The Gary show                                                      

  The Elizabeth show    







In the Wikipedia stats below, note she didn't outspend the crowd, and won more than twice what the Liberals and NDP scraped up between them.

Added: Commenter Pat Patrick below mentions "American":  Wikipedia says she was born in Hartford Connecticut to a British father and American mother in 1954 and became a Canadian citizen at age 24 after the family moved to Nova Scotia.
Added:  Comments show hard feelings remain within the Green Party.  The intra-party campaign was not successful.

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