[URBAN NOTE] "Trading in Silva for Cash?"

[rfmcdonald]

Paul Weinberg's NOW article about the challenge being mounted by NDP candidate Andrew Cash against Liberal incumbent MP Mario Silva in my riding of Davenport caught my attention. Cash--a former writer for NOW, incidentally--has been mounting a strong challenge, with extensive community outreach and criticism of the apparent inability of Toronto's Liberal MPs to get things done, but Silva has the riding's strong Liberal tradition and his own experience in immigration and related domains to draw on. And voter turnout is apparently low--54.4% as opposed to 58% last election--so without significantly greater turnout there may not be change.

First outing is with Liberal incumbent Mario Silva, who rides a wave of charm as he knocks on doors north of Bloor and Dufferin, conversing in English, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.

While the Liberals have held onto various incarnations of this old west-end Toronto riding for decades, Silva admits that demographic changes – about one-quarter are now of Portuguese origin – have made winning re-election more challenging.

“When I first got elected [in 2004], people were staying a lot longer in the neighbourhood,” he says.

Is this a possible opening for the NDP, which came second in 2008 with one-third of the vote against Silva’s 45 per cent? Will demographic shifts north of Bloor, including the arrival of Latin Americans and South Asians, alter the equation? And finally, the big question: will Jack Layton’s rising fortunes affect a riding that U of T political scientist Nelson Wiseman counts as one of the safest Grit seats in the country?

No doubt NDP candidate Andrew Cash introduces a bit of glamour to the race as a veteran musician, and seems at first blush to represent the cooler addresses at the south end of the riding. Off stage and canvassing north of Dundas, he’s definitely less nattily dressed than his smooth rival, Silva.

But he makes up for that with an intensity that’s hard to ignore, perhaps the result of his Catholic social action upbringing. He started canvassing here about a year and a half ago, and, unbelievably, he engages in a political exchange with everyone he meets.