Mable Elmore and her NDP family secrets

Current Position: NDP candidate in Vancouver-Kensington

Past Positions: Elmore got her start as a Federation of Labour Regional Political Coordinator during Jim Sinclair's term as president. She is also an activist in CAW local 111, and an active member of stopwar.ca

Family Connections: Elmore is a proud member of the NDP’s “Socialist Caucus,” a group of people who think that the rest of the NDP are not socialist enough. 24 hrs columnist and NDP activist Bill Tieleman is one her biggest fans.

Family Secrets: Why does Elmore have the shortest “official biography” of any candidate on the NDP website? There is nothing about this or this.

Jim Sinclair and his NDP family secrets

Current Position: President, BC Federation of Labour

Past Positions: President, BC Federation of Labour. Appointed to BC Hydro Board by NDP government in 1990s.

Family Connections: Sinclair has made the BC Federation of Labour a safe haven for ex-NDP staff members in search of work. He has hired former Glen Clark communications director Geoff Meggs and former Premier’s Office senior staff person Jessie Uppal.

Family Secrets: Controversial anti-Zionist NDP candidate Mable Elmore got her start as a Federation of Labour Regional Political Coordinator during Sinclair’s term as president.

What IS the NDP's candidate screening process?

With another NDP candidate being ridiculed by media this week, we were going to write a blog entry about the very poor choices the NDP is making in selecting candidates that it thinks should run our economy in troubled times. We were going to make pithy comments and ridicule them, but why should we, when the media and Carole James herself are already doing it for us?

James is quoted in a CBC story yesterday saying the controversy of disgraced candidate Ray Lam’s racy Facebook photos forcing his resignation as a candidate in Vancouver False Creek reflects “the reality of the new media.” She goes on to add:

“It will be interesting to watch politics over the next 10 to 15 years when you have an entire generation of young people who grew up with their lives public on Facebook.”

Boy, can’t wait to see what kinds of photos other NDP candidates will show us! Imagine, going into politics and having their whole lives made public. These are the kind of people who would have their hands on the levers of power in a $35 billion operation. Really confidence-inspiring, isn’t it?

Meanwhile, saving us from having to come up with commentary about this whole thing is The Province’s respected columnist, Michael Smyth. His story yesterday, headlined “Big holes in NDP's candidate-screening process; Latest in party's parade of wingnuts for elected office,” added up Lam’s Facebook faux pas with Mable Elmore’s anti-Zionist comments, and throws in some federal NDP candidates predicaments to conclude that the NDP don’t know how to screen candidates.

“The NDP promised to do better. Instead, it seems "why stop there" has become the theme song of the NDP's wingnuts-for-office parade…”A lack of judgment," NDP Leader Carole James explained yesterday, Gee, do ya think?”

But the best line Smyth’s newspaper article – and really, we couldn’t have made up this stuff better ourselves:

“But it's worse than that for the NDP: This kind of pattern can plant serious doubts in the minds of people wondering if the party and its candidates are fit to run the province.”

Do we even need to say it? Carole James and the NDP. Wrong party, wrong leader, wrong time.