[URBAN NOTE] "Adam Vaughan trap"

[rfmcdonald]

NOW Toronto's Jonathan Goldsbie writes about the NDP reaction to the outcome of the 2014 by-election in Trinity-Spadina. This election saw Liberal Adam Vaughan take an absolute majority of votes cast, beating NDP candidate Joe Cressy by a sizable distance. Many prominent NDPs are now saying that Vaughan would have been a better fit for the Liberals, and that his allegedly NDP-ish aspirations won't be satisfied in the Liberal party.

Sour groups, I wonder?

As recently as two and a half months ago, when Cressy strode into the auditorium of the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre to accept his party’s uncontested nomination, it appeared he’d have the easiest route to Parliament of any NDPer in recent memory. Olivia Chow had held the Commons seat from 2006 until she stepped down to run for mayor in mid-March, and Cressy – who’d managed her very successful 2011 campaign – was understood to be the designated successor in the by-election she triggered.

But Chow’s succession plans failed once before: when she resigned from city council ahead of her 2006 federal run, she wanted her Ward 20 seat to go to Helen Kennedy, her NDP-backed former assistant. Yet the orange machine seemed caught off guard by the strength and popularity of then Citytv reporter Vaughan, who in November that year won handily with 52 per cent of the vote to Kennedy’s 35.

Vaughan’s name recognition, public profile and popularity in the area have only grown since, and were obviously the largest factors in his victory. But among those at Ryze, another theme emerges: that Vaughan could just as easily or should have run for the NDP instead.

In a brief address preceding his introduction of Cressy, leader Thomas Mulcair mocks what he perceives as a dissonance between Vaughan’s values and those of his chosen party. “Mr. Vaughan ran a very good campaign,” he says. “One of the interesting things was he had a lot of progressive ideas, but they were NDP ideas, not Liberal ideas!”

Mulcair continues the backhanded praise: “We’ll see how that goes for him when he finds out that Justin Trudeau actually is in favour of Line 9 and Justin Trudeau does want the Keystone pipelines – things that the NDP is standing up against.”