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Smith willing to stir the pot for votes

Monique Smith wants to win the Nipissing riding so badly she’ll come stir your soup. Smith is poised to unseat Progressive Conservative MPP Al McDonald as part of a Liberal sweep in Thursday’s provincial election.
Monique Smith wants to win the Nipissing riding so badly she’ll come stir your soup.

Smith is poised to unseat Progressive Conservative MPP Al McDonald as part of a Liberal sweep in Thursday’s provincial election.

But the daughter of former Nipissing Liberal MPP Dick Smith, who served the area for 12 years, isn’t taking anything for granted, and would, she said, take a page out of the old man’s book if need be.

Back in 1971 Smith was running against former North Bay Mayor Merle Dickerson and won, Monique said, “by a handful of votes.”

“Part of that was the fact he stayed in some woman’s house and stirred her soup and baby-sat her children while his coworkers went out and took her to the polls,” Smith said.

“So we know how important it is. That’s the way I was raised and we’re going to work until the very last second to get every Liberal voter to the polls.”

And if a spoon is thrust in Smith’s hands, so be it, she said Wednesday.

“If someone asks tomorrow I’ll be stirring soup, absolutely.”

But it seems, says Toronto political analyst Graham Murray, it will be the PCs, including McDonald, who end up in the soup.

"I cannot see how a seat won so narrowly in the byelection can be held onto when the polls province-wide are so strongly against them," Murray said.

"And Smith is a strong candidate made even stronger in the face of the evangelical level of Dalton-mania in the province."

Smith concurs.


“We believe that certainly the province is on the verge of huge change,” Smith said, and she believes Nipissing voters are moving in that direction.

“We think it would be great to be part of a Liberal government, so I strongly encourage people to think about the issues, to think about health care and education, what’s happened in the last eight years and what we’re proposing,” said Smith, former chief of staff to Ontario Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty.

Smith has been criticized in some camps as being a parachute candidate, a virtual unknown dropped into the riding from Toronto after Liberal George Maroosis lost by 19 votes to McDonald in the 2002 Nipissing byelection.

But, Smith said, the characterization hasn’t been dogging her on the hustings.

“I’ve had no one comment to me on the door on that issue. All they want to do is talk about the real issues and that’s where we’ve stayed,” Smith said.

“I think we’ve had a number of planted questions from the opposition because they don’t want to talk about our record, they don’t want to talk about health care, or education, issues that are of real concern to people.”

A recently released local poll show Smith and McDonald virtually neck and neck, and election history in Nipissing over the last 20 years suggests ‘Avalanche Al’ could return to Queen’s Park while many of his Tory colleagues don’t.
Smith said if that does happen, she’ll continue making her life in North Bay.

“I own a house I have a job, I don’t have any plans beyond that. I’m staying here.”