Candidate Profiles: Gerard Kennedy

Well, we now come to the man sitting in 3rd place for our profile series, Gerard Kennedy.

Gerard Kennedy

I had figured I would support Gerard quite a while ago. I didn't know much about him at the time, but I'd heard he was a younger candidate, worked at the food banks in Edmonton and Toronto, was a CEO of the year in the early 90, had done admirably in Ontario as education minister yet not even having a degree himself, and was bilingual. Almost all of that was true.

My first chance to meet Gerard was at LPC(O). He was suffering from a cold, and thus wasn't overly enthusiastic, but I did like his speech to the youth in the afternoon. He got up on a chair, and gave a good talk to us all. My only comment at that was that he didn't say anything in french at that event.

Now, the recurring theme here is his french capabilities. He's passable in french, certainly no worse than Harper was a couple years ago. To be truthful, I was expecting he would be a bit better than he is, but if you're not used to talking it regularly, it's hard to pick it up right away (heck, I'd taken french immersion from pre-school until Grade 12, then 2 years without it and I could barely order a combo meal from Harveys in french).

Apart from that, he's got a lot of talents. His team is very youthful and full of energy (well, except for the fact that Telegdi is endorsing him. I still can't figure that one out). And he's gotten where he has without any real media coverage. People still don't really think he's a major player, even if at SummerFling he was one vote behind Iggy in the straw poll (boy was that annoying on the bus ride home from Peterborough). He's sitting in 3rd, but even today when they were going over strengths and weaknesses on Question Period they went Iggy, Rae, Dion, Kennedy, in that order.

But back to my experiences with the campaign. He has actually come to KW and visited our club twice. 2 more times than Rae, Iggy, and Dion combined. He came for our club's wine and cheese fundraiser back in June (along with Dryden, Bennett, and Fry), and again a week before the DSM to give a quick speech to our club. He came in and answered some tough questions, and from those I talked to, most people were very impressed by his answers. He knows how to answer questions, and while he may not be as experienced at the federal level in politics, he certainly has learned a lot in the last 6 months and definitely gotten up to speed.

But really, the part I like most about him, is his focus on renewal. He seems to be one of the few people who doesn't blindly think that just changing our leader will bring us back in favour with the people. I'm a firm believer that we need to do more than just put a new coat of paint on the party and make it look like we're a new group. And I, like Justin Trudeau, believes that he has the best vision for how to do that.

Convention Prediction:
We'll go in with a big team, ready to defend our vision for the country and try to get people to see things the way we do. It won't be easy, but it'll be interesting. The first few days should be all trying to convince people that Kennedy is the right man to lead the party and the country. Then we get to the vote. If Dion passed Gerard, then my guess is the Kennedy delegates will swing to him. If we stay ahead of Dion, then we just need to pick up more from him than Rae does in order to pass Rae. Even at that it won't be easy, but Kennedy definitely has a decent shot at taking it all.

Future:
However it ends, we all know Kennedy has a long future. If he loses, the leader will be in his late 50s and Gerard's going to have to be considered the frontrunner for next time. If he wins, then we've got an election to lead. It will be harder for Harper to run negative ads against Gerard than some of the others, but it still won't be an easy campaign.