Tories Boost Liberals in Byelection?

From the Hill Times:

A top Tory from Winnipeg told The Hill Times that had the Conservatives mounted the same candidate who ran in Winnipeg North in the 2008 election, Ray Larkin, whose daughter Marni Larkin is a senior director and organizer for the federal Conservatives in Manitoba, NDP candidate Kevin Chief would likely have won.

Instead, late last summer, after Mr. Lamoureux defeated a prominent member of the large Filipino community in the riding for the byelection nomination, the Conservatives dropped Mr. Larkin and selected a little-known member of the Filipino expatriate population, Julie Javier, who barely ran a campaign, avoided candidate debates and media interviews, featured a mobile poster mounted atop an automobile that sporadically appeared in the riding, and drew criticism from even Conservative party members for her lacklustre effort.

The end result gave Ms. Javier a paltry 1,647 votes, which NDP MP Pat Martin (Winnipeg Centre, Man.) says came largely from a diehard knot of Filipino Conservative supporters who supported the tough-on-crime agenda Prime Minister Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) drew attention to on his only low-profile visit to the riding. Had Mr. Larkin been the Conservative candidate, after having won 5,033 votes and 22 per cent of the vote in the 2008 election, Liberal candidate Kevin Lamoureux, who resigned his provincial legislative assembly seat to contest the byelection, would have lost, the senior Conservative said.

It appears that despite allegations the Conservatives put up Ms. Javier to draw votes from the Liberals, the opposite was the case—Prime Minister Harper and the Conservatives wanted Mr. Lamoureux to win.

Party insiders say there is one main reason: They want Mr. Ignatieff to be leading the Liberal Party into the next general election. Mr. Ignatieff has the lowest personal voter support ratings on the federal scene, perhaps since Brian Mulroney, although not for the same reasons, and he has been unable to bring the party's support above the 30-per-cent threshold in public opinion polls.

More at the article. This is really getting pathetic. Really, they traded Dion for this guy? And yet, they're still convinced they're the natural party of Canada, that all they have to do to win a majority is wait it out.

I wish it were true, but it isn't. You really do need to give people a reason to vote for you (besides "ooga booga scary tories," I mean.)