Defeating the Liberals and PCs in Windsor, Essex and
Chatham-Kent: It Can Be Done!
The Windsor, Essex and Chatham-Kent area contains two
ridings held
by the NDP (Windsor-Tecumseh and Essex), one by the Liberals (Windsor
West) and one by the PCs (Chatham-Kent-Essex). The working people of
this region can use their vote to prevent the Liberals or PCs from
gaining any seats and to
take a seat from both as a way to keep either from achieving the
majority
they so covet. Essex and Chatham-Kent-Essex are also held by the Harper
Conservatives federally. By taking a clear stand to defeat the Liberals
and PCs and getting at least three others to do the same, the
electorate of these ridings can send
a message to all parties and make their vote count to deny any party a
majority mandate for their respective version of the austerity agenda. Ontario
Political
Forum
encourages
everyone living in these ridings to take up the campaign put forward
by the teachers and education workers to get three others
who can each get three others who can get three more...and make their
contribution to saying No! to the fraudulent austerity agenda. In most
of these ridings the majority are non-voters and if this section of the
electorate can be mobilized it will put all governments and parties on
notice!
Essex
Essex is currently held by NDP incumbent Taras
Natyshak. In the 2011 provincial election the NDP narrowly won the
riding by defeating the PCs' Dave Brister. Before that, the riding was
held for many years by Liberal MPP Bruce Crozier who passed away
shortly after retiring.
 Just prior to the February
2014 Niagara Falls by-election in which
the PCs and Liberals were defeated, Brister was fired as the candidate
by PC Leader Tim Hudak for publicly raising doubts about the party's
right-to-be-slave-labour proposals. Hudak was also forced to publicly
back down himself after losing
to the NDP in Niagara Falls.
The riding is held federally by the Harper
Conservatives' MP Jeff
Watson. He is the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport
Lisa Raitt. The PCs are targeting this riding, hoping to split the vote
and take it from the NDP as well as to try to prevent any movement
that could lead to a loss for the
Conservatives federally. They won the riding federally by just under
7,000 votes in 2011 and are vulnerable, given its working class
composition and the prospect of working people uniting in action to
defeat the Conservatives whenever a federal election is called.
2011 General Election
NDP -- Taras Natyshak 17,375
PC -- Dave Brister 16,006
Liberal -- Ken Schmidt 11,348
Green -- Jason Matyi 857
Voter turnout: 51.9%
2014 Candidates
NDP -- Taras Natyshak
PC -- Ray Cecile
Liberal -- Crystal Meloche
Green -- Mark Vercouteren
2011 Federal General Election
Conservative -- Jeff Watson, 25,327
NDP -- Taras Natyshak, 18,538
Liberal -- Nelson Santos, 7,465
Green -- Cora Carriveau, 1,290
Marxist-Leninist -- Enver Villamizar, 77
Voter turnout: 59.5%
Windsor-Tecumseh
 The riding is currently
held by NDP
incumbent Percy Hatfield who won the seat in the August 1, 2013
by-election following the resignation of Liberal Minister of Finance,
Dwight Duncan. Duncan resigned after the Liberal loss in the
Kitchener-Waterloo by-election in which
they were unable to win the majority they wanted to be able to impose
austerity by violating the rights of workers and others with impunity.
In the Windsor-Tecumseh by-election, the Liberal vote collapsed with
12,889 votes being lost, while the PCs lost 2,602 votes compared to
2011. By preventing the Liberal
or PCs from making an advance in this election the working people can
re-affirm their statement made in the by-elections that No! Means No!
The riding is held federally by NDP MP Joe Comartin.
2013 By-election Results
NDP -- Percy Hatfield, 15,693
PC -- Robert de Verteuil, 5,149
Liberal -- Jeewen Gill, 3,057
Green -- Adam Wright, 934
Libertarian -- Dan Dominato, 398
Family Coalition -- Lee Watson, 241
Freedom -- Andrew Brannan, 124
Voter turnout: 30.5% (44.5% in 2011 General Election)
2014 Candidates
NDP -- Percy Hatfield
PC -- Brandon Wright
Liberal -- Jason Dupuis
Green -- Adam Wright
Libertarian -- Timothy Joel Marshall
Windsor West
 This riding is currently
held by Liberal
incumbent and Minister of Children and Youth Services and Minister
Responsible for Women's Affairs, Teresa Piruzza. The seat was
previously held by Sandra Pupatello who held a number of high level
Cabinet positions in the McGuinty government,
including Minister of Economic Development and Trade, as well as being
appointed by the Harper Conservative government to its Aerospace Review
panel. Pupatello did not run for re-election in 2011. After McGuinty
resigned however she emerged as a candidate for the leadership of the
Liberal Party, losing to
Kathleen Wynne after current Finance Minister Charles Sousa threw his
support behind Wynne. Pupatello was recently awarded the position of
Chair of Hydro One by the government, an entity the Liberals are now
"reviewing" as part of seeing what public assets they may privatize.
The working people, led by the teachers and education
workers in
this riding can deprive the Liberals of this seat as a contribution to
preventing a Liberal majority. The Liberals have to hold all the seats
they currently have and gain only five new seats to obtain a majority
and taking away a seat they currently
hold would make that six. Not only that, but with the current attempt
to organize a Liberal sweep, every riding of which they can be deprived
counts.
In the last Ontario general election the Liberal Party
put a lot of
resources into this riding to save the seat from being lost to the NDP.
No doubt this is even more the case now. Despite the resources, in 2011
the Liberals lost almost 9 per cent of the votes they received in 2007
while the NDP gained 5.24 per
cent and the PCs 7.84 per cent. This was prior to the Liberal-PC
attack on teachers and education workers with Bill 115, as well as the
various corruption and other scandals that have emerged since. The
education unions report that many of their members were Liberal voters
in the last election and surely will not
be this time around as they go all out to mobilize everyone to get
three people to vote for the NDP as a
way to defeat the Liberals and PCs and send a message to all parties
that they will be held to account for attacking workers' rights.
The riding is held federally by NDP MP Brian Masse.
2011 General Election Results
Liberal -- Teresa Piruzza, 14,127
NDP -- Helmi Charif, 10,544
PC -- Todd Branch, 8,476
Green -- Chad Durocher, 1,051
Voter turnout: 42.3%
2014 Candidates
Liberal -- Teresa Piruzza
NDP -- Lisa Gretzky
PC -- Henry Lau
Green -- Chad Durocher
Independent -- Helmi Charif
Chatham-Kent-Essex
Rally against
planned closure of Heinz plant in Leamington, November 30,
2013. |
This riding is currently held by
PC incumbent Rick Nicholls, deputy (anti-)Labour Critic for the party,
who openly defended the party's right-to-be-slave-labour proposals.
Nicholls, a motivational speaker, cites Ronald Reagan as one of his
guiding lights
This riding was held by Liberal Pat Hoy from the time it
was created
in 1999 until his retirement from the Legislature in 2011. In the 2011
General Election, the Liberals lost almost 20 per cent of their votes,
while the NDP gained 10 per cent and the PCs won. The PCs are desperate
to hold onto this riding as
they narrowly won it in the 2011 general election as a result of a
split in the vote between Liberals and NDP. According to reports they
are putting large amounts of glossy flyers and money into the riding in
the hopes of creating the impression of invincibility in the face of
people's opposition to the PCs. Given
the experience in the by-elections, by giving those not inclined to
vote and otherwise Liberal voters an argument to vote for the NDP as a
way
to defeat both the PCs and the Liberals, the PCs could readily be
defeated in
this riding.
Federally the riding is held by Conservative MP Dave Van
Kesteren. A
loss for the PCs would also send a message to the Harper government
that in Southwestern Ontario they had better watch out.
2011 General Election
PC -- Rick Nicholls, 15,121
Liberal -- Paul Watson, 11,631
NDP -- Aleksandra Navarro, 8,415
Green -- Holly Sullivan, 1,027
Voter turnout: 49%
2014 Candidates
PC -- Rick Nicholls
Liberal -- Terry Johnson
NDP -- Dan Gelinas
Green -- Ken Bell
Libertarian -- Douglas McLarty
2011 Federal General Election
Conservative -- Dave Van Kesteren, 23,360
NDP -- Ron Franko, 11,44
Liberal -- Matt Daudlin, 7,172
Green -- Rob Hodgson, 1,470
Voter turnout: 59%
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