NDP Deputy Leader Tom Mulcair, who officially announced his bid for the party’s leadership last week was backed by 33 MPs, but high-profile boosters don’t mean as much as they used to, says former NDP strategist Robin Sears.

“The history of caucus endorsement as a predictor of leadership success, in the NDP as much as elsewhere, is not very good,” Mr. Sears said.

Mr. Mulcair (Outremont, Que.) officially declared his candidacy on Oct. 13 in Montreal. As of Friday, 33 MPs announced their support for Mr. Mulcair, as well as former MP and NDP leadership contender Lorne Nystrom and New Brunswick party leader Dominic Cardy. 

But a strong display of endorsements isn’t a guarantee that any candidate will rake in the votes, said Mr. Sears 

“When we move from a delegated convention environment to a one-person-one-vote environment, the ability of leaders in caucus or anywhere else in the party to say, ‘Well I can get you 500 votes, and therefore I’m a key person and why should I endorse you?’ That’s completely gone, because now nobody can offer to deliver ‘any more than a few dozen votes’ and even there I would be a bit skeptical. The turnout might be 75,000 [to] 100,000 voters,” Mr. Sears explained. 

In the Jan. 25, 2003 NDP leadership in Toronto, there were 58,202 ballots cast. The  now late Jack Layton won 31,115 votes on the first ballot. 

While the party switched to the one-member-one-vote system in 2003, Mr. Mulcair told The Hill Times that he believes his endorsers will be able to drum up further votes for him at the leadership convention next March in Toronto. 

“The reason I believe that is that these people all have a lot of political experience. They’re going to be using that experience to help organize in their areas,” he told The Hill Times last week.

Mr. Sears noted that it’s good to have endorsements at the beginning of the campaign, it doesn’t necessarily matter if those people are inside caucus.

“You have to look at the biographies of those individuals and what it is they may be able to deliver in terms of support on the floor of the convention in addition to their titles,” he said, adding that many of Mr. Mulcair’s supporters last week were relatively inexperienced MPs who are just months into their own political careers. 

Of Mr. Mulcair’s Parliamentary supporters, 29 are newly-elected from Quebec, and four are from Ontario. 

Brian Topp, who stepped down as party president to run for the leadership, also has a host of supporters, including NDP MPs, former NDP leader and party icon Ed Broadbent, and a number of people from the Canadian creative industry. 

British Columbia member of Parliament Nathan Cullen (Skeena-Bulkley Valley, B.C.), newly-elected MP Romeo Saganash (Abitibi-Baie James-Nunavik-Eeyou, Que.) and Nova Scotia party organizer Martin Singh have also declared their candidacies, though no politicos have come out to publicly support them yet, except Mr. Saganash has one MP supporter, Christine Moore (Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Que.).

His party’s foreign affairs critic before joining the race, NDP MP Paul Dewar (Ottawa Centre, Ont.) doesn’t have the support of caucus colleagues yet, but key Manitoba provincial party organizers as well as provincial ministers have come to his side, which Mr. Sears said is an important sign for party insiders. 

Mr. Dewar told The Hill Times that he hasn’t been focusing on getting party endorsements. 

“I really fundamentally believe that this is about engaging with the grassroots,” said Mr. Dewar. 

Mr. Dewar was did a town hall Winnipeg last week, and travelled to Edmonton over the weekend. He said he planned to tap into the bonds he forged with community and union leaders as teacher and union representative, then as a local, youth-oriented, MP in downtown Ottawa and more recently as foreign affairs critic. 

“He’s right that it is the grassroots that will determine who wins, but of course the reason that people chase endorsements is because the grassroots are affected by the people they respect,” said Mr. Sears. 

Having a host of supporters with “a lot more support to be shown in the coming weeks and months” was important to Mr. Mulcair when he was deciding whether to run, said he explained.

“I set out two objectives for myself when I was weighing a possible run at the leadership. First was of course to establish that I could find support across Canada, and I think that you had a very important indication of that yesterday,” Mr. Mulcair said. 

Mr. Dewar said that taking a candidate’s number of endorsements as a sign of campaign strength is an easy narrative to build, but not necessarily the one that fits.

The process has changed, Mr. Sears said, and so using caucus support as a key indicator of possible victory is “an anachronistic frame of analysis.”

Nowadays, “caucus members are important, endorsement are important, ability to organize at the grassroots level is important, but it’s very, very hard to handicap how or why somebody has endorsed one candidate versus another,” he said. 

Further adding to uncertainty is the possibility that senior New Democrat politicians are withholding their support until a clearer picture of the race emerges.

“Making the choice among those seeking your endorsement can be a fateful decision for your career if you bet wrong,” said Mr. Sears.

“It’s not surprising to me that a number, particularly of the more veteran caucus members, are withholding their endorsements until they see a little more how events are going to unfold, because for them, the consequences of their choices are very real,” he explained. 

Right now, Mr. Dewar said that everyone in the race is “finding their feet” and working on putting what they stand for “in the window” for Canadians to see.

“When people wake up in the morning they care about the issues of the day, and not as many people care about who is standing beside you on the stage, it’s about who’s with you in your community,” he said. 

Mr. Mulcair also said he was looking forward to a campaign of ideas. “It’s going to be a robust discussion of ideas. We’ve got a lot of talented people who come at this with different experiences and backgrounds,” Mr. Mulcair told The Hill Times. 

He refrained from commenting on what a lack of endorsements, especially those from inside caucus meant for his fellow leadership hopefuls.

“I have tremendous colleagues who are running, I have the utmost respect for all of them, and I’m just going to let them run their campaigns and I’m going to run mine,” he stated. 

His reticence is indicative of the tone Mr. Sears said he expects for the campaign.

“Everybody is going to bend over backwards not be accused of causing harm to the party, and more specifically to Jack [Layton]’s reputation and legacy as having been the champion of a less hyper-partisan type of politics,” said Mr. Sears.

Many of the new party recruits who are attracted by the promise of Mr. Layton’s more humane style of politicking, and the “the old-style stab-them-and-club-them-over-the-head type of politics is profoundly offensive to them,” he said. 

Right now, Mr. Sears said it’s too early to pick a front-runner in the campaign, as all there is to go by are perceptions of a candidate’s competency, media coverage and momentum. 

“That’s all just reading tea leaves. When we get to December, January, February, and there are some real signals in terms of membership totals, and where they’ve come from, and who they’re likely to be associated with, you can make a better judgment at that point of who’s likely to win,” he said.

Mr. Sears added that the field isn’t settled yet. NDP MP Peggy Nash (Parkdale-High Park, Ont.), her party’s finance critic, is widely expected to declare her candidacy. 

“I would keep my eyes focused on the horizon of who may announce. I think there still may be one or two choices and that could change the field significantly,” he said.

jbruno@hilltimes.com

The Hill Times

Who Supports Who in NDP Leadership Race to date:

NDP MP Nathan Cullen (Skeena-Bulkley Valley, B.C.)

•No declared supporters

NDP MP Paul Dewar (Ottawa Centre, Ont.)

•Michael Balagus, chief of staff to Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger and former COS to former premier Gary Doer 

•Bob Dewar, former chief of staff to Manitoba premier Gary Doer 

•Manitoba MLA Kevin Chief

•Manitoba Health Minister Theresa Oswald

•Manitoba Innovation, Energy and Mines Minister Dave Chomiak

•Manitoba Finance Minister Rosann Wowchuk

NDP MP Thomas Mulcair (Outremont, Ont.)

•NDP MP Robert Aubin, Trois-Rivières, Que.

•NDP MP Tarik Brahmi, Saint-Jean, Que.

•New Brunswick’s NDP leader Dominic Cardy

•NDP MP Sylvain Chicoine, Châteauguay-Saint-Constant, Que.

•NDP MP Anne-Marie Day, Charlesbourg-Haute-Saint-Charles, Que.

•NDP MP Matthew Dubé, Chambly-Borduas, Que.

•NDP MP Pierre-Luc Dusseault, Sherbrooke, Que.

•NDP MP Jonathan Genest Jourdain, Manicouagan, Que.

•NDP MP Réjean Genest, Shefford, Que.

•NDP MP Sadia Groguhé, Saint-Lambert, Que.

•NDP MP Dan Harris, Scarborough-South-East, Ont.

•NDP MP Sana Hassainia, Verchères-Les-Patriotes, Que.

•NDP MP Pierre Jacob, Brome-Missisiquoi, Que.

•NDP MP Matthew Kellway, Beaches-East York, Ont.

•NDP MP François Lapointe, Montmagny-L’Islet-Kamouraska-Rivière-du-Loup, Que.

•NDP MP Alexandrine Latendresse, Louis-Saint-Laurent, Que.

•NDP MP Hélène Leblanc, LaSalle-Emard, Que.

•NDP MP Wayne Marston, Hamilton-East-Stoney Creek, Ont.

•NDP MP Marc-André Morin, Laurentides-Labelle, Que.

•NDP MP Marie-Claude Morin, Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot, Que.

•NDP MP Pierre Nantel, Longueuil-Pierre-Boucher, Que.

•NDP MP Jamie Nicholls, Vaudreuil-Soulanges, Que.

•NDP MP José Nunez-Mélo, Laval, Que.

•Former NDP MP Lorne Nystrom

•NDP MP Annick Papillon, Québec, Que.

•NDP MP Claude Patry, Jonquière-Alma, Que.

•NDP MP Manon Perreault, Montcalm, Que.

•NDP MP François Pilon, Laval-les-Îles, Que.

•NDP MP John Rafferty, Thunder Bay-Rainy River, Ont.

•NDP MP Mathieu Ravignat, Pontiac, Que.

•NDP MP Jean Rousseau, Compton-Stanstead, Que.

•NDP MP Djaouida Sellah, Saint-Bruno-Saint-Hubert, Que.

•NDP MP Lise St-Denis, Saint-Maurice-Champlain, Que.

•NDP MP Philip Toone, Gaspésie-Îles-de-la-Madeleine, Que.

•NDP MP Jonathan Tremblay, Montmorency-Charlevoix-Haute-Côte-Nord, Que.

NDP MP Romeo Saganash (Abitibi-Baie-James-Nunavik-Eeyou, Que.)

•NDP MP Christine Moore (Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Que.)

Martin Singh

•No declared supporters

Former NDP president Brian Topp

•Former B.C. NDP MP Dawn Black

•NDP MP Françoise Boivin, Gatineau, Que.

•NDP MP Alexandre Boulerice, Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie, Que.

•Former NDP leader Ed Broadbent

•Paul Bronfman

•Actor Wendy Crewson

•NDP MP Jean Crowder, Nanaimo-Cowichan, B.C.

•NDP MP Libby Davies, Vancouver East, B.C.

•Actor Shirley Douglas

•NDP MP Alain Giguère, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, Que.

•NDP MP Yvon Godin, Acadie-Bathurst, N.B.

•Raymond Guardia

•Shaftesbury CEO Christina Jennings

•Peter Keleghan

•Former provincial NDP leader Joy MacPhail

•United Steelworkers president Ken Neumann

•Mayko Nguyen

•Actor Gordon Pinsent

•Fiona Reid

•Former Saskatchewan premier Roy Romanow

•Patricia Rozema

•Criminal lawyer Clayton Ruby

•NDP MP Kennedy Stewart, Burnaby-Douglas, B.C.

•Rossif Sutherland

—Updated to Oct. 14