National Affairs
Clearly Ignatieff's race to lose
Claire Hoy

And now there are four. Actually, there are still eight contenders for the national leadership of the

Liberal Party - down from the original 11 - but after what was called "super weekend," it's obvious to all that the best thing the four bottom feeders could do for their party is to quit and let the leaders get on with the serious business of campaigning.

Which means, of course, that the four losers - Ken Dryden, Joe Volpe, Scott Brison and Martha Hall Finlay - likely won't step down and free up their delegates to vote whichever way they want, at least for the first ballot at the December convention.

The current leader is academic Michael Ignatieff, who garnered 30.5 percent of the delegates (who are committed to his camp for the first ballot), followed in order by former Ontario premier (and former New Democrat) Bob Rae at 19.7 per cent, veteran federal Liberal minister Stephane Dion at 16.8, and former Ontario education minister Gerard Kennedy, at 16.7 per cent of the 4,300 delegates.

The other four combined can barely marshall a corporal's guard at the convention, having managed to muster only 13.8 per cent in total, with Dryden at 4.7, Volpe, 4.2, Brison, 3.9, and Hall Findlay, 1 per cent.

Rather pathetic after months of campaigning and hundreds of thousands of dollars spent.

What the results clearly show that, unlike the last Liberal convention, where Paul Martin had things locked up tight beforehand, it's still possible for any of the top four to win, although Kennedy's dreadful showing in Quebec (where he won an embarrassingly paltry 16 delegate votes) and Dion's weakness in Ontario (where he won about one-third of Ignatieff's total), makes it extremely difficult for either of them to emerge as the overall winner.

That having been said, however, both Kennedy and Dion are well placed to play the roles of kingmaker at the convention, particularly if Ignatieff is unable to garner enough delegate votes on the second and/or third ballots to get him over the top.

But it must be troubling for those Liberals who had high hopes for Rae to realize that he came in third in Ontario, well behind both Ignatieff and Kennedy (Ignatieff has nearly twice as many delegates in Ontario as Rae), a clear indication that Ontario delegates - yes, even Liberals - remember what a disaster Rae was as premier of the province more than a decade ago.

If Liberal delegates aren't willing for forgive and forget, what chance would Rae have of maintaining that party's Fortress Ontario in the next general election?

The answer, given the delegate-selection results, is obvious.

To this observer, Dion's strong showing was the biggest surprise, not because he finished a strong second in Quebec behind Ignatieff, but because he did relatively well in British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan, provinces where the ruling Tories are very strong and where you wouldn't expect the only Francophone leadership candidate to shine.

As for Ignatieff, he actually performed quite well in most of the country, winning the key battlegrounds of Ontario and Quebec, while standing a close fourth in B.C. , third in Prince Edward Island, and either first or second everywhere else.

In addition, the party system calls for an influx of exofficio delegates, i.e. current and former MPs and senators, and when they are added to the mix, Ignatieff's total will likely top 35 per cent, leaving him a mere 15 per cent or so to win it all.

That likely means that the only way to stop Ignatieff from winning is one of those Anybody-But-Iggy movements which often emerge against front-runners in political leadership contests.

But that only works when the person seen to be headed for victory is so hated by those who don't want him to win that they'll set aside their own first choice to block it.

While Ignatieff isn't everybody's cup of tea, obviously, he hasn't exactly generated a lot of serious animosity among his fellow Liberals. At least not yet.

Still, as things stand, any two of the other three serious contenders, e.g. Rae, Kennedy and Dion, do have more first ballot delegates combined that Ignatieff, but it is highly unlikely that all of the delegates from those three camps would vote the same way, i.e. against Ignatieff, allowing one of the three contenders to win.

In short, this contest is clearly Ignatieff's to lose. And he'd have to work awfully hard to blow it.