An endorsement: Marva Wisdom for the Liberal nomination in Guelph-Wellington

Endorsements by bloggers in Canada for particular candidates have nowhere near the weight behind them or the influence that the main US bloggers who root for the Democratic cause do - we’re still in our nascent and preliminary stages in that regard. Nevertheless, at some point one needs to take a stand on where loyalties lie, and today is the day for me to be proclaiming that I and this blog endorse Marva Wisdom to be the one carrying the Liberal nomination forward in Guelph-Wellington to replace retiring Liberal Brenda Chamberlain.

You might ask why. There are 2 reasons why I became a Liberal after covering the December ‘06 Liberal Leadership Convention. The first reason was as I’ve already mentioned prior that I was very impressed with Dion as a candidate and how most if not all of his political stances match up perfectly with mine.

The 2nd reason is Marva.

It was mere coincidence (or maybe it wasn’t) how I met Marva. I was trying to meet as many of our blogging affiliates from Progressive Bloggers as I could while we were up in Montreal, because Wayne Chu (the head admin at Prog Blog) and I knew there would be a fair # of them there, and it was as good a time as any to meet some of them. For their part, a lot of them wanted to meet myself and Wayne as well when they found out we would be coming to help cover the convention (a good chunk of Liberal bloggers who were up there either as bloggers or who were there as delegates were/are also Progressive Blogger affiliates).

One of those bloggers was Michelle Oliel of Michelle’s World, whose blog sits on my sidebar. As it so happens, we were chitchatting with each other on the ground floor of the Palais De Congres when a woman strolled up to talk to Michelle. It happened to be Marva, and Michelle introduced me to her as a friend of hers. Marva, on finding out who I was, declared how she loved reading the blogs (that was her first plus), and then we got into a discussion about Guelph - which is where she was from (another plus). We had quite a good chat that evening, and she made it a point of coming to visit a bunch of us in the Bloggers Room to say hello to us all the next day, when she didn’t have to (she was very busy as you’ll find out). We had another good chat, and I found to her very amiable, very friendly, and I appreciated how she thought bloggers could contribute and make an impact in politics today.

That’s not the only reason however that I liked her and wanted to support her. We had a lot of time to kill up in Montreal before the actual voting for the Liberal leader took place, and there were other things going on. One of those was the Renewal Commission the Liberal Party had convened to do some soul-searching of itself. Marva was the co-chair of that Commission.. and I had the opportunity to listen to her speak on several things. I discovered that she was also very close in ideology and political stances to my own.. and I was impressed with her.

After the Convention and a few days after I’d made the decision to join the Liberals, I had a long 45 minute chat with Marva on the phone. I’ve had more then a few chats with Marva since the (and 1 meeting in Guelph) and I offered my assistance and her support if she wanted it. She gladly accepted.. and I’ve been helping her out a bit with the “blog” part of her website.

I’ve decided to declare myself now publicly because anyone who gets on Facebook can see I’m one of the admins at the “Marva Wisdom for Guelph MP” site.. and I thought it kind of silly to keep quiet when its that obvious. The other reason is because there are only a few days left till the nomination meeting commences (April 12th) to decide the Liberal nominee, and if there are even a few Liberal delegates who read this in Guelph, and if having a public endorsement from a fairly well-read blog in Liberal and Progressive circles means anything (I’m not holding my breath on that, by the way ), then now is the time to do the endorsing and declaring who you think is the best candidate out there to represent a riding.

I’ve nothing against the other candidates - Marva’s chief competitor is actually a relative of Steve V of the Liberal blog Far and Wide, and I’ve nothing but respect for him and his blog.. and for his relative. I just feel Marva would make an excellent MP for Guelph, and is the type of person the Liberal Party can use in Parliament to help renew itself.

So, that is why I am endorsing Marva, and I say that its time to send some Wisdom to Ottawa (both literally and figuratively) because they sure can use some