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NDP nomination race in Sudbury boosts party membership

The high-profile race to be the NDP candidate in Sudbury in the next provincial election will be decided Oct. 6, the party has announced.
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NDP Leader Andrea Horwath is expected to attend the party's Sudbury nomination meeting Oct. 6 at the Steelworkers Hall. The NDP's fortunes in Sudbury have been on the rise since the party came within a few hundred votes of winning the riding in 2011. File photo.

The high-profile race to be the NDP candidate in Sudbury in the next provincial election will be decided Oct. 6, the party has announced.

Declared candidates so far include Paul Loewenberg, bar manager of the Townehouse Tavern and artistic director of Northern Lights Festival Boreal, and Joe Cimino, an elementary school teacher and a city councillor in Ward 1 since 2006.

Also running is Gordon Harris, a Sudbury businessman who also sought the nomination in 2011 and has run for the Green Party in the past.

Party president Richard Eberhardt said more candidates could step forward before the Sept. 25 deadline, but anyone who wants to vote at the Oct. 6 meeting must be a member in good standing by midnight Sept. 6. Memberships are $5 for students and people with low incomes, $25 for everyone else.

“And you must live within the boundaries of the Sudbury riding in order to vote,” Eberhardt said Friday. “But you don't have to live in the riding necessarily (to be a candidate).”

The nomination meeting will be held at the United Steelworkers Hall on Brady Street beginning at 1 p.m. Once their credentials have been verified, delegates will be admitted into the voting area and given a ballot book. Candidates will be able to make a final pitch for support before the first round of voting begins.

Volunteers will manually count the paper ballots, and the order each candidate placed will be announced. Vote counts won't be made public, but each candidate will be given detailed results.

If no candidate gets 50 per cent of the votes plus one, the last place finisher is dropped from the ballot and another round of voting is held. The process is repeated until there's winner.

Eberhardt said the party had around 400 members before the nomination race began, but that doesn't include new members the candidates signed up over the summer. They won't know how many for a couple of weeks, he said.

“The candidates are keeping that pretty close to their chest,” he said. “But we're hoping for a sizable boost in the numbers.”

Party Leader Andrea Horwath will be in Sudbury for the meeting. The most recent polls show the NDP with a comfortable lead in Sudbury, and Horwath is the most popular leader, although her party is in third place, behind Tim Hudak's Tories and Premier Kathleen Wynne's Liberals.

The riding has been held by Liberal MPP and former cabinet minister Rick Bartolucci since 1995, who announced in February he was retiring. He agreed to stay on as an MPP until a new election is called. No candidates have stepped forward yet to run for the Liberals in Sudbury, while former school board trustee Paula Peroni is running for the Progressive Conservatives.

Loewenberg shocked many in the city when he came within a few hundred votes of winning the riding in 2011. Those factors combined with Horwath's personal popularity have the party feeling good about its chances of winning next time around, Eberhardt said.

“The winner of this race will be in the drivers seat,” he said in a news release announcing the nomination meeting. 


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Darren MacDonald

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