Hate to steal again from the Instagram feed of Gerry Butts, an advisor to the Justin Trudeau for Leader campaign, but he gives us this picture tonight from Kelowna where, shortly after it was taken, his candidate spoke to the crowd. Butts, on Twitter reported:
600 people to see justintrudeau in #Kamloops, BC. Six. Hundred. People. For a #Liberal. #lpcldr instagr.am/p/UxKx8KJNpu/
— Gerald Butts (@gmbutts) January 22, 2013
Now, Butts is certainly not a disinterested party here, of course, [UPDATE: The Kamloops Daily News goes with 600 as well in “Trudeau wows Grand Hall Crowd“] but that certainly looks a rather full house to me and it’s worth pointing out the following:
- The Liberal candidate in the riding Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo has been an increasingly irrelevant creature for three successive general elections running. In 2004, the Liberal candidate finished second to winner Conservative Betty Hinton. But the Liberal has finished 3rd ever since. And, in the last general election, the Liberal candidate notched just 3,026 votes compared to Conservative Cathy McLeod who won 29,682 and the New Democrat who won nearly 21,000. So I think it’s fair to say that this riding is, in no way, shape or form, in play for the Liberals in the 2015 general election. It will be a very tall order for the NDP to make up 9,000 votes against McLeod, a former nurse who has been a solid enough MP that she has become a Parliamentary Secretary and, should she choose to run again, will have her name on the ballot for the third time. It seems an order of magnitude taller for the Liberals to find more than 25,000 votes to leap over both the New Democrat and the Conservative.
- And yet … It is the middle of winter with a long way to go until the end of the Liberal leadership race. No real tension in this leadership race that everyone believes Trudeau will win. And if/when he does, he’ll only be leading the third party in Parliament. Little prospect that the Liberals will take this riding. And right now in BC, most politically engaged types that show up to these meetings must surely be focused on this spring’s provincial battle between Clark and Dix. And yet, there they are according to Butts: 600 people who have decided to come out to listen to the guy who might be the next leader of the third party in Parliament.
NOTE: An earlier version of this post identified Gerald Butts as campaign manager for the Trudeau team. In fact, Katie Telford is the campaign manager. Apologies for the mixup and I’m pleased to correct the record.
How about 250?