NAPANEE, Ont. – Sean McAdam seems like a strange choice as a Canadian Alliance candidate in a rural eastern Ontario seat.
He is a 31-year-old urbanite, a Parliament Hill insider who has been making a living as adviser to CA leader Stockwell Day, a job he once did for Reform leader Preston Manning.
Yet here he is, trying for the second time to get elected as the MP for Hastings-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington, a large and mainly rural riding with a long history of electing small ‘c’ and big ‘c’ conservative MPs.
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He may be, as his opponents say, a parachute candidate but he is doing his best to let locals know he understands their issues.
At his campaign headquarters, McAdam meets a visitor in a committee room that proclaims its defiance against Liberal gun registration legislation – “C68 The Home Invasion Bill.”
He talks about the alienation the riding feels after seven years of representation by Liberal Larry McCormick, the first Liberal in more than 60 years to represent this vast rural riding 200 kilometres east of Toronto.
“This is a bedrock conservative riding,” McAdam said. “People here have a strong affinity for conservative principles and they see the Alliance as the embodiment of those principles.”
Gun registration remains a major issue. The CA and gun groups work together to spread the word that the Liberals should be replaced.
HFLA, as the riding is called locally, is one of the rural Ontario ridings high on Alliance’s list of breakthrough ridings in Canada’s most influential political province.
In 1997, Progressive Conservative and Reform candidates polled 12,000 each, compared to McCormick’s 18,000. This time, the Alliance is hoping for a collapse of the Conservative vote to push the CA over the top.
Manitoba CA candidate Brian Pallister, a former Conservative, identified 30 Ontario ridings he considered winnable if the two conservative parties joined forces. The CA has targeted these ridings, hoping for an Ontario presence of a dozen or more seats.
On the ground, the campaigning is intense.
On Nov. 3, Manning began some strategic Ontario campaigning by spending a day in the northern part of the HFLA riding.
On Nov. 4, CA leader Stockwell Day drew more than 600 to a breakfast speech where he slammed prime minister Jean ChrŽtien for arrogance and the corruption of power.
The party is appealing to disaffected farmers, gun owners and conservatives who believe it is time to displace the Liberals.
McCormick said he is taking it in stride, planning a visit by ChrŽtien late in the campaign and appealing to voters to let him continue his Parliament Hill work on rural issues. He is a former chair of the Liberal rural caucus and was parliamentary secretary to the agriculture minister in the last Parliament.
“My people tell me things are very positive out there but I’m not taking it for granted,” he said last week as he campaigned in the village of Tweed.
Conservative candidate Darryl Kramp, also campaigning in Tweed last week, insisted the CA is not gaining in the riding. And while poor national polls for the Progressive Conservatives hurt, he figures a strong local campaign will overcome that.
“I think in rural ridings, people put a lot of stock in having a local member and Mr. McAdam is not from here,” he said. “And I think the Liberals are very vulnerable here on gun control and their abysmal agriculture policies. I think people here feel betrayed, as I do.”
