Thin skins, incumbents and election signs

The campaign meanders along the path from Podunk to the interior areas as the five candidates for Skeena-Bulkley Valley attempt to sell their soap to the locals. It's been a typical campaign in these rancid tinged days, with less than civil accusations and negativity seeming to rule the day, mind you the last few days seem to have been more unruly than most.

The main protagonist seems to be Mike Scott the former Reformer, who is now flying the flag of the Conservative Party. He has questioned the staffing situation in the Nathan Cullen campaign, suggesting that the NDP candidate is using his paid staffers to get the word out.

In an interesting sideshow to that action, Scott's signs feature the slogan "re-elect" Mike Scott, hearkening back to his days as the regions MP. While possibly correct in historical tones, it seems rather disingenuous to be suggesting that you're actually the current MP. It's a situation that has not escaped the attention of the current MP, trying to keep the riding for the NDP.

When he's not dodging kamikaze moose and trying to be a thorn in the side of the official incumbent, Scott is hard on the case of the sacrificial Liberal lamb, Gordon Stamp-Vincent. At an all candidates meeting in Houston, Scott was on the attack on the revelations of Liberal corruption over the last few years. Now this probably should not come as a surprise to any Liberal candidate, it seems to have been the tone of Parliament for the last year and was detailed extensively in the papers, on radio and television. But on Monday it proved to be an attack that Mr. Stamp Vincent did not take kindly too, eventually walking off the stage and leaving the debate.

Now one can understand his unease at having to listen to a recitation of Liberal sins of the last few years, it surely would not have been an enjoyable thing. If Scott went too far by suggesting that the current candidate was of the same quality of those caught up in scandal, one can see how a fellow could get a little annoyed. Though from the account in the Terrace Standard it was not a suggestion that the candidate himself was corrupt. Regardless, you can't just walk off a stage and leave the debate. Sometimes you just have to take one for the team. There are something like five more of these little candidate get togethers before election day, to blow them all off might be akin to political suicide. Politics is not for the thin skinned, nor the weak of heart.

If nothing else the walkout will probably complete the capitulation of Skeena Bulkley Valley by the Liberals. Reducing the battle to a two man fight between Scott and Cullen, it will be interesting to watch where the Liberal votes walk to on election day.

It's been a strange campaign, broken up as it was by Christmas and New Years it never seemed to gain any traction. Only in the last few days has it begun to gain notice, the sounding board at the hackingthemainframe site will give you a sense of the local tone of debate as voting day gets closer.