Garth - Election Day 2008

LAST STREET
posted by Garth Turner on 10.13.08 @ 11:32 pm

Day Thirty-seven

Hard to believe it was Thanksgiving Day, sunny, twenty-seven degrees, kids in the street on Rosemount Crescent. I leaned over in the truck and pinned the Liberal badge onto the front of her sweater. “This is it,” I said to Dorothy. “Last street.” She smiled like a woman with a secret. “You owe me.”

A hundred houses, yet it took three hours. Perhaps it was the sun, the warm wind or the stock market bounce, but most wanted to talk. At the end of one driveway five people sat in fold-up canvas lawn chairs, the three guys drinking from long-necked beer bottles. They’d watched us snaking up one side of the street, and were ready when we hit. So, the guy with the mirrored shades said, why shouldn’t I vote Green?

Vote whatever way you want, I said, but know the consequences. The group talked about tight polls, first-past-the-post, proportional representation and green government. I was impressed enough to share some local polling with them. So, Shades said, you’re telling us one vote for the Greens means two votes she doesn’t need to score?

Exactly, I said. Vote how you want. Just know what you’ll get. They asked for copies of the literature in my hand. We shook. It was good.

We worked another block, lots of people home, warm greetings, expressions of support or at least respect. Then rounding a garage I spotted the homeowner, early 60s, baseball cap, shorts, fussing with the garden hose. I introduced myself, as he walked up. “I know who you are, and I wouldn’t vote for you if you were the last goddamned person on earth because I am a true Conservative.” I opted for a charm offensive, turned towards Dorothy and introduced her. “Yeah, well I’m happy for you, jerk.” We bailed. As we crossed the next lawn he was standing on his driveway, yelling.

Rosemount yielded fourteen identified Conservative voters, twenty-one identified Liberal voters, thirty-two friendly but not-saying voters and forty not-homes. Some people surely lied to the candidate. Others would never think of volunteering their politics (I don’t ask). Door-knocking is highly unscientific, but no less accurate than a cold call from a polling company.

Tonight I’m told Halton is a tight race. Esther says some people are predicting I will win, some that I won’t. I see that dozens of newspapers across Canada are highlighting this as a contest to watch. Television networks will be parking their satellite trucks in the lot behind our Main Street headquarters Tuesday night, and have already had technicians swarming in to install new data lines.

Stephen Harper has thrown everything at me that he’s got, and in the Conservative war room they’ll be anxiously awaiting my concession speech. Said a Canadian Press wire story today, “Turner has been an acid-dipped thorn in Harper’s side. The Conservatives badly want him defeated.”

And why would Tories, from Harper down to the rude dude in shorts, have me in the crosshairs?

Perhaps it’s because I’m even competitive in this election, when I was supposed to be dead. By kicking me out of caucus for refusing to be silent or putting the party ahead of my constituents, the plan was to force me out of public life. Stripped of party affiliation, I’d not survive an election.

Perhaps it was because I made a discovery. The Liberal party is now where Progressive Conservatives are finding a home, as my former Conservative brand is turned into neo-Reform. This is where the future will lie – a moderate, centrist team which can argue for less government and lower taxes while rejecting the laissez-faire doctrines which almost ruined our world last week.

Maybe it’s envy. I have people around me, like Esther, who epitomize all that is decent and passionate about public life. I have a leader who eschews the politics of fear and talks endlessly about the country that’s possible. I have the freedom to speak, write, blog and think independently, without a party muzzle or the threat of censure.

And I apparently have enough constituents who believe an MP should be more than a party sock puppet, to make the government worry about me so.

Tomorrow in Halton is not about me. It’s a contest between competing visions of how we should be led. By back room boys who anoint candidates and leaders who demand obedience, or by citizen-politicians who work for the people?

I’ve no idea what the day will bring. None. But I have hope.

I hope to show that more of us value freedom and choice, than will accept control and conformity. I hope to prove democracy starts on Rosemount Crescent.

I hope to show my wife these thirty-one months were worth the fight and all the attacks they brought into our marriage.

I hope to show my country that I stood for something. And I won.

Already have.

Please note: Elections Canada rules require web site content to be frozen on voting day until polls close. Therefore all comments posted here after midnight Oct. 13 will be released at 9:30 pm tonight.

posted by Garth Turner on 10.13.08 @ 11:32 pm