Leadership 2012 Roundup

I haven't done a roundup post in quite some time (having focused instead on candidate analysis and preliminary endorsement posts over the past week). But in advance of today's Montreal debate, let's take a look at some of the noteworthy developments from the week.

- Niki Ashton spoke to the Canadian Wheat Board Alliance about her rural priorities while observing again that the eliminating of the single-desk Wheat Board without any input from producers could be a huge turning point when it comes to prairie support.

- Paul Dewar was the latest subject of a Joanna Smith profile while adding Dennis Bevington to his list of endorsers. And Dewar alsoanswered Aaron Wherry's questions, including this on the question of whether the party's work in expanding its base is a matter of values or language:

Q: I’m not quite clear to what degree the debate is actually happening within the party, but to the degree that it is, where do you find yourself on does the party need to go to the centre or does the party need to continue on the path it’s on? Do you take a particular position on that?

A: I’d like to build on the work that we had done in the last election, which was fine-tuning our message and small, practical steps to get to a more equitable, egalitarian society. I think that’s what’s proven successful in the past and certainly my connections to the Manitoba party illustrate that I’m very much interested in taking that path. In doing so though, you don’t say, well, we’re not going to talk about the importance of our relationship with labour or the importance of working people. You actually open it up to say and we think that other people should benefit from solid pensions and benefits and that government has a role to play here.

- Thomas Mulcair unveiled endorsements from Robert Chisholm and David Christopherson, while releasing a labour rights policy which mostly sticks to the NDP's existing platform.

- Peggy Nash promised a Royal Commission on Electoral Reform aimed at implementing proportional representation - which looks to have been nicely timed to catch the attention of any new party members supporting Nathan Cullen in the hope that his joint nomination process would lead to PR.

- Brian Topp released a new endorsement statement from Roy Romanow, while facing round of questions about Bay Street contributions of his own.

- On the commentary side, Dan Lett offered his analysis of the field in the wake of last weekend's Winnipeg debate:

The NDP should be happy to see seven candidates in this race. It tells Canadians this is a job worth fighting for. The Manitoba wings of the Liberal and Progressive Conservative parties, which are both in search of a leader but have not a single declared candidate between them, would be well-advised to pay close attention to the breadth and strength of the slate of candidates looking to fill the late Jack Layton's shoes.
...
In late March, Layton's shoes will be filled by a new leader who will be given a little more than three years to prove 2011 was something more than an anomaly. Sunday's debate did not demonstrate with certainty who the best person is for that job. But it did show that the NDP has some fascinating options.

Meanwhile, Alice crunched Dewar's polling numbers to figure out which candidates have an apparent path to victory. Quinn compiled the available candidate positions on LGBT issues. Gloria Galloway summarized the voting process and noted that between 80% and 95% of ballots may be marked in advance of the convention. And Ian assembled his candidate rankings.