Haydain Neale, 1970–2009
Transit City and Transit Cities
Peeve Patrol
Newsstand: November 23, 2009
The Making of a Medley
Photo by Ayngelina Brogan/Torontoist.
Neither Levy the person nor levy the sales tax was able to overturn the Liberal stronghold of St. Paul's yesterday, as voters selected Eric Hoskins (Liberal) to be their new MPP by a roomy 19% margin. (Full election results here.) Though the Progressive (?) Conservatives (with an assist from the NDP) tried their hardest to turn the by-election into a protest vote on the Harmonized Sales Tax, citizens in one of the wealthiest ridings in the province refused to become outraged at the prospect of paying more for a subset of their purchases ten months from now. (Expect the Liberals to trumpet this fact far and wide in July 2010, when the tax takes effect and they can say, in the face of their opponents' outrage, that voters are clearly sanguine about the whole thing.)
Levy, a first-time candidate but long-time political presence—she has been the Sun's City Hall columnist for the past eleven years—badly misread the mood of the electorate, beating the drum of HST anger relentlessly, though she turned out to be by far the angriest person in the room. For people familiar with her writing, this was not entirely surprising, inordinate expressions of outrage being something of a staple for her. Levy's one-note campaign failed to inspire and failed to offer a nuanced vision of both her electoral district and her province, preferring to only to tear down rather than suggest where she might build up.
Hoskins was notable for being absent in a variety of unfortunate ways (he skipped one of the two all-candidates meetings and failed to offer a detailed policy statement of his own), and he went into the campaign with the always dangerous albatross of parachute candidate hanging around. But with an impressive resume (among other things, he helped found War Child Canada) and a populace apparently disinclined to be goaded into ire for no particularly good reason, Hoskins was never an especially vulnerable target. Early word is that he may soon be in cabinet, and life in St. Paul's will now return to its ordinary, anger-free fall.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
"citizens in one of the wealthiest ridings in the province refused to become outraged at the prospect of paying more for a subset of their purchases ten months from now."
Well that comment was a bit cheeky now, don't you think!
It seems the author's bias is readily apparent and very Toronto Sun-esque. Bash the person you dislike and give the one you do a free pass.
The interesting thing you do fail to point out is that the three main parties essentially had the same percentage of the vote last night as they did in 2007 (give or take 1%), while the Green Party dropped 3%. The reason this is interesting is that it really does show that my riding is a true supporter of Dalton's policies (HST & otherwise).
I was kinda hoping that this would be seen as a referendum on Sue-Ann Levy as a columnist...After yesterday's vote, can't we say "no more please!"...
I believe it was a referendum of Ms Levy.
Intelligent voters would read her columns and
decide that she's not the type of person who
should be a politician.
Best thing she could do is apply to work
at CFRB or some other reactionary medium.
"beating the drum of HST anger relentlessly"
That would be an overstatement. As a St Paul's resident, I was contacted by the Liberals and NDP by phone twice, found them outside St Clair West station (along with the Greens) on one occasion each but never saw a PC candidate/volunteer/campaign worker during the whole election run-up.