Potty mouth could cost Martin votes in ‘safest’ seat

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This article was published 19/09/2015 (3684 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg Centre NDP MP Pat Martin’s potty mouth might have finally cost him Donald Swanson’s vote.

“He doesn’t think before he shoots his mouth off,” said Swanson, standing a stone’s throw from Martin’s Portage Avenue campaign office Friday afternoon. The Wolseley resident has voted for Martin in the past, but now considers himself undecided and may cast a ballot for Martin’s rival, Liberal candidate Robert-Falcon Ouellette.

“The sense I get is it’s close,” said Swanson, who noted Ouellette’s popularity in several nearby neighbourhoods in last fall’s civic election. “Usually Pat is out helping in other ridings, and this time he seems to be sticking to this area.”

This week, thanks to a scrappy debate where Martin called the riding’s Green party candidate a son of a bitch, Winnipeg Centre emerged as an unexpected race to watch. Though one New Democrat called it the ‘safest’ NDP seat in the Prairies, Martin has said he’s more nervous than usual about the Oct. 19 vote, despite considerable support from volunteers from the labour movement and a formidable campaign team. Veteran NDP operative Lorraine Sigurdson, the provincial party’s former president, is serving as Martin’s campaign manager, and New Democrats say Martin is door-knocking harder than he has in years to keep the seat.

Ouellette is trading on his status as the golden boy of last fall’s mayoral election, and Liberals say the reaction to Ouellette at the door is “like night and day” compared to past Liberal campaigns in the riding. Ouellette has so far waged an aggressive and unconventional campaign in Winnipeg Centre, issuing a cheeky press release calling attention to Martin’s vacation home on Saltspring Island and sending a mini-newspaper called the Falcon to nearly every home in the riding. Friday, on his campaign’s Facebook page, Ouellette touted the results of an internal, automated voice-response poll that put him and Martin neck and neck. The poll, done in the days prior to the headline-grabbing downtown debate, also showed a large pool of undecided voters.

Still, the Liberal party does not consider the riding a top-tier target, so far. And it’s not clear whether Ouellette has the campaign cash or volunteers to deliver a win, especially because he’s focusing his campaign on areas of the city where he’s personally popular, but where turnout is traditionally very low. In the last election, Martin won nearly 90 per cent of the polls in the riding and has increased his share of the popular vote in every election since he first won in 1997.

Like Swanson, voters who stopped to speak with the Free Press Friday afternoon were surprisingly engaged, opinionated and a little cranky with their longtime MP.

Margot Lavoie, a social justice activist with an inner-city church, said she was turned off by Martin’s salty language at Thursday’s downtown debate.

“If you’re going to represent people, you don’t want to be rude,” said Lavoie. “We’re trying to raise our children to be respectful of others.”

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Like Swanson, Lavoie has typically voted NDP but is now undecided, though she said she’ll likely hold her nose and vote for Martin.

“I find Pat is a little bit distant from the problems in our riding,” said Lavoie, echoing the refrain used by Green party candidate Don Woodstock Thursday night to needle Martin relentlessly.

Young voter Russell Pilon said he’s also a bit fed up with Martin, but said the Liberal party’s support for Bill C-51, the Conservatives’ controversial anti-terrorism legislation, means Ouellette will never earn Pilon’s vote. The 23-year-old predicted most of Wolseley will still likely vote for Martin and help him continue to carry the constituency.

“Everyone in the riding has problems with Pat Martin, but I still think we’ll vote for him just to keep the seat NDP,” said Pilon.

maryagnes.welch@freepress.mb.ca