23 Mar For NDP Leader: Nathan Cullen (at least on the first ballot)

I’m going to vote for Nathan Cullen on the first ballot in the NDP leadership race. In fact, I joined the national NDP, minutes before the February 18 deadline, for the sole purpose of doing so. But I’m starting to feel a nagging doubt, for the odd reason that Cullen might just be the only dark horse who could defeat frontrunner Tom Mulcair.

Cullen was far and away the strongest performer at the leadership debate Halifax, a fact lost on the national press corps but not on the audience. He has raised eyebrows by proposing joint nominating meetings with the Liberals in Conservative-held ridings. That’s anathema to Libera- hating, old-line Dippers, but it’s the kind of creative thinking needed to undo the Harper majority before it does even more permanent damage to Canada.

It’s clear that as leader, Mulcair would, like Cullen, move the party toward the center. He has a reputation for being smart and tough politically, qualities that will be needed to beat Harper. He’s also said to be a bit of a prick one-on-one. It’s hard to say whether his willingness to set aside old NDP hobby horses, or his lack of personal likability, is the biggest factor in the enmity he inspires among old NDP warhorses.

If Mulcair is defeated by a gang-up in which the second- and third-place candidates throw their support to Cullen, the backlash in Quebec will hamper, perhaps fatally, the party’s ability to hold its newfound beachhead there. Like Andrew Cohen and others, I regard that knee-jerk reaction as a foolish artifact of the most irritating trait in Quebec’s political mindset. But it is also a reality of Canadian politics, and a real risk.

So I will support Cullen on the first ballot, and I hope a strong showing by him will show that the overwhelming majority of New Democrats think defeating Harper is more important than clinging to 1970 lefty nostrums. I reserve the right to switch to Mulcair as Saturday wears on.

In a few weeks, I’ll join the federal Liberals, if they’ll have me, with a view to supporting whichever of its leadership candidates encourages cooperation among moderates and progressives in the shared goal of defeating Harper.

And for the record, I reserve the right to consider voting Progressive Conservative in the next Nova Scotia election, as I have sometimes done is the past, since that party, unlike it’s federal counterpart, retains a moderate element.