Karlene Nation: A conservative star who was buried by Hudak’s PCs

On election night last Thursday, while I was absentmindedly following the dismal results on TV at my local PC candidate’s ‘victory’ party, I saw a name come up in the feed that surprised me: Karlene Nation. Not watching the local TV news in the past ten years, I did not immediately recognize why I recognized her name. It took me a few moments to realize Karlene Nation is (or was, until recently) a TV reporter for CTV News. I did not know until then that she had been a candidate for the Progressive Conservative Party in the recent provincial election. (I presume her conservatism came from her father, one of the first black police officers on the Toronto force.) 

Looking her up on the Internet I saw that she had lost in the riding of York West, but I was surprised by how much. This long-time reporter for the top-rated TV station in Toronto had received a shellacking. The Liberal candidate won with 11,800 votes; the NDP candidate received 10,000 votes; and she only got 2,800 votes. She had also represented PC Ontario in this riding in the 2011 election with similar results. (She had also run municipally for a council seat in Ward 19 in the 2010.) 

This situation perfectly illustrates a serious problem with the people running the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario. Here they had a star candidate - an award winning TV journalist, who also happened to be a black woman - and they buried her in a no-hope riding. I presume she chose that riding because she lives there but somebody in the party should have spoken to her and parachuted her into a swing riding where her name recognition and star power might have shifted a marginal riding into the Conservative column. They should have also made her one of the party spokesmen, subtly countering the inevitable accusations of racism, stated or implied, that left-wing parties and the MSM routinely make against conservatives.

But they didn’t. They were asleep at the wheel. The Tim Hudak brain-trust: no killer instinct, and no will to win.

 

Comments

[Copinacus]

Stop blaming Hudak for Pete's sake. It was the gullible Ontario voter who buried her. Hudak presented a truly conservative platform ( for the first time), one you approved of ( for the first time) and he lost.
He did want we wanted and two thirds of the electorate rejected it.

[John T]

I don't know. If a popular PC figure like Doug Holladay couldn't retain his Toronto seat, I don't think Karlene stood a chance anywhere.
Granted they probably could have given her a higher profile, but there were a lot of mistakes the PC's made. I used to want to scream "No" at some of the things they were doing (or even more, failed to do).
But the inescapable conclusion IMO, is that this election was "bought" by the public service unions.

[Cincinnatus]

HI John T:

You are undoubtedly correct. A lot of mistakes were made, but burying Nations was one of them.

Hi Copanicus:

You are right to point out that I supported Hudak for presenting a truly conservative platform.

The trouble is, the voter is always right (even when he is wrong).

What is required is a post-mortem to acquire lessons-learned. Unfortunately, this can sometimes sound like an ex post facto I-told-you-so. Nevertheless it is required.

For what it is worse, let me state again my belief that Tim Hudak is a fundamentally honest, decent, honourable and forthright man. It's just that, after this election, he has been shown to be a poor politician.