Skeezix
Senior Member
Member Bio
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2007
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- 4,343
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- Location
- East of this, west of that
Oh, boy. MacLaren. I grew up in that riding. He's a product of the Ontario Landowners Association, a group of wingnuts fixated on real property rights and who are all fundamentally peeved that people other than middle-aged white guys have human rights. The group also spawned Rick Hillier. There was a concerted effort to take over PC riding associations, and they succeeded in a few Eastern Ontario ridings. Once in control of this riding association, they promptly dumped sitting MPP Norm Sterling as the candidate the next election. Now, Norm may have been a bit stale (he was first elected in the 1970s when Davis was Premier), but he held the riding for the PCs continuously, even during times when there weren't a lot of safe Tory ridings, and he had a fairly good reputation in the various communities in the riding, having attended decades worth of charity dinners and town fairs. It may have been time for a change, but MacLaren and his crew tossed him out unceremoniously (there wasn't a lot of respect being paid to his years of service), and Hudak didn't want to pick a fight with the OLA so didn't do much to protect Sterling. The whole episode left a lot of bad feelings among Torie, both in the riding and elsewhere, but most PC voters in this riding weren't exactly going to vote for McGuinty or Horwath.
With all these controversies, I think there may be a few Tories with some old grudges towards MacLaren looking to settle some scores. There are undoubtedly some people in the party who won't be sad to see him go.
