Cimino “shocked” that NDP staffer commissioned phone poll

An NDP staffer who owns a Hamilton-based communications firm says he commissioned a phone poll this week of about 400 Sudburians to test the impact should Greater Sudbury Mayor Marianne Matichuk enter the provincial race.

Pat McCoy was born and raised in Sudbury, but lives in Hamilton and is constituency assistant to Hamilton MPP Monique Taylor. He said he's in Sudbury doing outreach work for the party.

Despite answering the phone number attached to the campaign, McCoy said he's not campaign manager for Sudbury NDP candidate Joe Cimino, since the election hasn't been called and there's technically no campaign to run.

McCoy owns Hamilton-based Outsmart Communications, which, among other services, conducts telephone polls. The company asked Sudburians in a survey Monday how they would vote: for Cimino and the NDP, or Liberal if Matichuk was the candidate.

“Shocked,” was how McCoy described Cimino's reaction to the news of the poll, which McCoy said was done without Cimino's knowledge. 

“I found out what I what was looking to find out,” McCoy said, while declining to release details of the survey results.

With a spring election expected to be called late this month or in early April, rumours have been surfacing that Sudbury's mayor will be appointed the Liberal candidate to succeed longtime cabinet minister Rick Bartolucci, who is retiring.

Two candidates — Andrew Olivier and Elise Idnani — are already running for the Sudbury nomination. The Liberals have yet to set a date for their nomination meeting, the only major party in the Sudbury or Nickel Belt ridings that hasn't done so.

While saying she has definitely not decided whether to run for the nomination, Matichuk hasn't ruled it out, and said she had been approached by parties — including the Liberals — to gauge her interest in running.

“I've been approached, but it's like, 'You should run,' just like I was approached to run for mayor,” she after the Feb. 25 city council meeting. “Every mayor in Ontario is being poached and coached right now ... Is there interest? Well, come on, you got to look at it ... But right now, no thank you.”

On Tuesday, speaking from the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada meeting in Toronto, the mayor said she had no idea why someone would launch such a poll.

“I'm never going to Toronto again,” she quipped, while repeating she was not running for the Liberal nod.

“This really is the silly season.”