{"id":1604,"date":"2011-04-21T09:12:19","date_gmt":"2011-04-21T14:12:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/?p=1604"},"modified":"2011-04-21T09:17:37","modified_gmt":"2011-04-21T14:17:37","slug":"who-are-these-guys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/?p=1604","title":{"rendered":"Who are these guys?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Christopher Waddell<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In every election the Liberals, Conservatives and NDP know there are ridings that each has no hope of winning but at least in media eyes there is credibility attached to running candidates in all 308 constituencies. So they all nominate candidates everywhere but not necessarily with the same degree of scrutiny as in ridings they know they can win.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes that means candidate backgrounds aren\u2019t checked all that closely. Neither are their beliefs, past comments on the record or past activities. The only qualification in some cases is that the individual is willing to have his or her name put forward when there is no one else around &#8211; secure in the knowledge they will never have to worry about winning.<\/p>\n<p>That may mean the candidate doesn\u2019t live in the riding or even have much connection to it. No one looks that closely when everyone knows the person will be an election night afterthought.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Local riding associations may also be very small &#8211; in some cases just the diehards who could hold meetings in someone&#8217;s kitchen.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s the NDP in Quebec &#8211; until today. Now with two polls suggesting the NDP is suddenly in first place in the province the media spotlight will turn on them.<\/p>\n<p>Who are their candidates, where do they come from, have they been campaigning in their ridings and what do they have to say?<\/p>\n<p>Expect some surprises in the campaign\u2019s last 10 days.<\/p>\n<p><em><em><em>Christopher Waddell is director of the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University. He is a former reporter, Ottawa bureau chief for the Globe and Mail and a former CBC-TV parliamentary bureau chief and executive producer-news specials for CBC TV News.\u00a0You can follow him on Twitter @cwaddell27<\/em><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christopher Waddell In every election the Liberals, Conservatives and NDP know there are ridings that each has no hope of winning but at least in media eyes there is credibility attached to running candidates in all 308 constituencies. So they all nominate candidates everywhere but not necessarily with the same degree of scrutiny as in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,17,18,19,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all","category-election-2011","category-election-2011-campaign-strategy","category-election-2011-faculty-links","category-election-2011-media-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1604"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1612,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1604\/revisions\/1612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}