H/t Blazing Cat Fur
But what about the alternative? This time FCP only runs 31 candidate, plus many Social Conservative voters will choose to vote strategically - in a last-ditch attempt to get rid of McGuinty. And yet, it's extremely important to support FCP candidates where possible:
Back in 1990, I was the Chief Financial Officer for two campaigns in the Kingston area (city and township). During the election, one candidate attracted close to 1500 votes (5.4% of the vote) and the other candidate received over over 2,000 votes (6.9% of the vote). Several candidates received over 10% of the popular vote (the best was 13%).Regardless of the outcome, if there's at least a handful of FCP candidates that show strong performance on Thursday - it will be much harder for the "Red Tory" wing of the Ontario PCs to claim that Conservative policies alienate voters.
Some time after that, I remember going to an FCP meeting where our leader at the time, Don Pennell, told those gathered that the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party had contacted him about getting together for a chat. They indeed met and the PCs asked Don, “what it would take to make us (the FCP) to go away”. Don said that he proposed many policies and they didn’t see a problem with any of them, except, of course, the abortion issue.
Why is this an important story? It’s important because it shows that if people were to just vote for their fundamental principles, instead of worrying about “wasting their vote”, they actually can have more influence over the political establishment than they would otherwise have in just “settling” for the mainstream political parties and compromising their beliefs as well.
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