Tony Ruprecht I want my Toronto tax dollars back. Stop being Mike Harris.

Could Davenport bring Ontario it’s first ever green MP?

Curious why the Green Party Leader is running here? either way, he wont win. Might finish ahead of the tories though.

Same old, same old for this riding. Tony Ruprecht who keeps a presence by handing out plaques wherever he can and is only really heard from at election time. An absentee MPP who spends more time in Cuba than in his riding will be in again. Conservatives have no chance here. NDP will suffere because of local city councillor and former NDP part president, Adam Giambrone and his dictatorial, non-consultative style that has angerted a large block of residents. Green Party deJong is nuts to run here, but then I doubt he expects to get elected anywhere (and he tries everywhere).

Tony, the invisible MPP. I love his never ending use of pictures of crowds surrounding him with Photoshopped messages of love. It baffles me who is supporters are.

Liberal hold for sure, but….

..why is de Jong running in a riding that he can not possibly win? He needs a fiscally conservative and socially liberal riding and Davenport is anything but either of those.

Who is advising the Green Party?!? I noticed that on the federal level they are looking for an Executive Director and offering $ 60 K/yr - guys you get what you pay for! Bottom line is if you are not in Parliament, your voice has no impact!

I’ve been to the Tory HQ in this riding, and I can say that things will not end the same as last time. The Tories will double their vote here, if not more! The last election had the candidate almost gave up halfway though and sent his volunteer teem to a nearby needy riding. The campaign is fully behind Garcia, and so is a large portion of the Portuguese community. I wont comment on a winner, as I don’t feel it’s right since I’m working on the Garcia team, but I can say that we will finish father ahead then current predictors will have you believe. With this new information I’m certain the Greens wont be able to beat the Tories on e-day.

As I’ve commented elsewhere, there’s often buzz about how the NDP are going to “steal” Davenport from the Liberals. And it’s perfectly true, but not quite yet.

The city needs to grow more (meaning the riding moves further Southeast and swallows up some more chunks of Parkdale and Trinity-Spadina), a few more years need to pass to get the Rae era good and dead, and–at the risk of sounding incredibly crass–a few more old Portuguese and Italian couples need to move to the suburbs, or die, before this riding will be winnable for the NDP.

Tony Ruprecht has been able to win this riding by focusing on ethnocentric messages to draw in uninformed supporters. It works. But as this riding continues to diversify and the old guard continues to disappear (which they are, slowly but surely), this riding will become more and more slippery.

And while we’re on the Garcia/De Jong stuff, it really doesn’t matter. Yes, the Tories are getting savvier. No, it won’t be anywhere near enough: it’s remarkably easy to double your vote when your candidate is traditionally lucky to win back their deposit.

De Jong has made a mistake, insofar as he’s picked one of the most impoverished ridings in the country. The poor are rarely at the forefront of the green movement: they simply can’t afford to invest in ahead-of-the-curve technology, and more often than not don’t have the patience for people preaching short-term pain for long-term gain. He needs to find himself a nice upper middle-class riding with pretensions of social liberalism if he wants to win a seat. (And the fact that he’s come out against Catholic schools in one of the most Catholic parts of the province isn’t to his credit, either.)

Ruprecht will win. He’ll win on a reduced majority, but he’ll win.

Mike. interesting thoughts.

The NDP take Davenport Buzz…I have been hearing that for 10 elections.

One thing I love about the riding is how everybody always talks about the Portuguese vote when there are a lot of other groups in a diverse riding. A lot of the Portuguese friends that I talk with don’t vote or cannot vote and I find for those reasons the Portuguese factor is not as large as people make it out to be. If a candidate tried to reach the other groups they might build a solid base. I was told by an NDP worker that they expect big things because their candidate has a Portuguese last name. Thats an insult to all Davenport voters. Overall the riding is starting to fill with Parkdale people who cant afford to buy in PD anymore and other people who see the Junction areas as one of the last steals in the city. The last Ukrainians are passing away (they were the previous wave), there are few new Portuguese residents coming and overall there is a quiet housing turnover. On my street I expect that every house will have a new owner within 5 years.

Tony Ruprecht is a mystery man. People always say that their MP or MPP is never around but in Tony’s case its true. In fact he was my MPP in Parkdale and after 8 years of me being on local groups and organisations I never ever saw him. A vote for Tony the vanishing man is a double loss as he is a mystery to his own party as well and has zero clout. The only thing he is good at is running.

All levels of Conservatives have run poor candidates in this riding over the last 10 years. The reality is that this area is pretty liberal and historically the Conservatives are not the working persons friend, and this area has lots of working people.It would not take much to double the Tory vote. And they still will be far behind.

I would not call this riding “impoverished”, that is a bit of a reach and I also don’t like using broad comments, especially negative ones, to tar an entire area. And as a resident I would not use that word to decribe my funky ward.

One issue about Davenport for me is its shape. It is very hard to feel connected to Queen and Dovercourt when you live at Earlscourt. Dupont and Duffferin should be the convergence point of the 4 surrounding ridings and loose Davenport altogether.

On this riding…it’s less who I think is going to win and more who I think should win. Grits will take it, but the Greens should have it…

Some riding facts; Ranks amongst the lowest in terms of voter turnout in Ontario (just under 50% last election); Just 28% of eligible voters supported Liberals’ Ruprecht, yet it was considered he got in by a landslide? Only 35% of all residents speak English at home. Main languages are in order: Portugese, English, Chinese, SPANISH, ITALIAN, VIETNAMESE, PUNJABI, URDU, UKRAINIAN AND FRENCH. Yes it IS an “impoverished” riding with lots of low imncome earners (under $12,000/yr) and roughly 30% of residents making $30K/yr or less. As of today Sep23, I see a lot more interest in NDP than LIBS. Will be a close one now.

“impoverished” ? over 50 % of the households have an income over 40,000 according to stats from 2002, before the Drake/Gladstone effect, the Junction renewal, the St. Clair remodelling etc etc. I live in a working class portion of the riding and lets call it that instead of stigmatizing everybody with Toronto Sun style generalisations. Tony will sadly win again.

People are wrong when they say that the NDP has been claiming it will win for 10 elections. In fact the provincial ridings that make up Davenport have a long history of electing NDP MPPs. The NDP won what is now Davenport in 1975, 1977, 1981, 1985, lost narrowly in 1987 then won in 1990 and in 1995 when Tony Silipo easily held on in Dovercourt. The Liberals have won in 1999 and 2003 - but it is a mistake to claim that the NDP has never won this area at the provincial level.

I’ve traditionally been a Liberal supporter but as a resident of this riding I don’t know how I could in good faith vote for Mr. Ruprecht. I have never seen him around and can’t say he has done a thing (positive thing) for the community except for come around at election time. Mr. Ruprecht is a Conservative in Liberal colours which makes mendecided. I like Mr. Tory but don’t really care about the rest of the party? I am leaning towards Green or NDP. I have a feeling that feelings such as mine are not so uncommon in the riding possibly giving the Green Party leader a chance at least to play spoiler.

the ndp is a definite contender. the tory campaign will hurt Ruprecht the most and the Green neo-conservative platform (letting the rich off the hook with no income taxes while killing off the pensioners with thru-the-roof hydro & property bills) will create an interesting race in these final days. it isn’t the portuguese vote that will decide it, but much of it will go NDP, as most in that community think Tory’s faith-based schools plan is ridiculous and will mean more taxes to fund more schools (whether or not that is true, it is the perception that counts). At this point, those who want to defeat Ruprecht will vote NDP if they want him out because that is the only party that can do it. Anything else & Ruprecht is back in (& back to Cuba to recover from a bruising campaign).

Again I say this is an impoverished riding. Stats Can stats about “median” incomes are misleading (as any statisticians will tell you). Look at the detailed studies of municipal wards 17 and 18 and you find that about 30% of the riding earns less than $30,000/year (not much theese days). Look at how much the food banks are used (a lot!) Stats don’t account for the homeless, crack addicts and prostitutes that roam the area. Look at where the concentration of pawn shops, money marts and the like are. Look at empty storefronts, struggling businesses… Then tell me the area is not impoverished.

Ken you sound like one of the doom and gloom crowd that hang around Lansdowne and Bloor. I can understand that as that area is where most of the bad stuff in the riding is centered but even there one can find positive changes underway. The riding has some run down areas and some high end areas. I politley say look at the ward map again to make sure you know where the boundries are.

I have never said that there are no poor people or homeless or anything in the ward. All I am saying is that you cannot call the entire ward impovrished beacuse it just isn’t.

As well in one post you quote stats and then when presented with stats from the same source that refute you you say stats are misleading. I am trying to work with you here but you wont accept anything but your own opnion. I am letting this go.

The poor do not make up the majority of any riding but this is certainly one of the poorest ridings in Ontario. There may be tiny pockets of affluence (i.e. Regal Heights) but the bulk of it is very solidly working class.

Here in the Boor and Dovercourt area modest semi-detached houses are selling for $700,000. Lots of pockets in the riding are becoming very gentrified. Bloor and Lansdowne is another world compared to College and Dovercourt. So yes, calling the riding “poor”is not accurate. It takes a lot of money to be a “working class” homeowner in this neighbourhood.
I always allow myself to believe the NDP has a chance here, so I’ve got fingers crossed that one of the most useless politicians around will get his walking papers on Wednesday.

Please note this comment is in a series of comments by me. I’m doing a prediction for every riding. For this riding I’m predicting the winner will be the Libs

Thank you for the message from Liberal headquarters.

Now back to the real news. All the polls are showing a bit of an NDP surge in the final days and on top of that the fact that a Liberal win at the province-wide level will make people finally have the courage to toss a reprehensible “thing” like Ruprecht into the garbage. Maybe he can then move to Cuba and live in that sleazy run-down house there where he spends most of his time (for God only knows what reason)

4 more years of the invisible man.

Ah DL,

We have encountered one another before on the York South Weston page, where I seem to recall YOUR complaint was that I had posted in more than one riding.

Your unrealistic pursuit of Davenport stripped YSW of volunteers that might just have put it over the top for Paul Ferreira.

A bum call by the downtown NDP in picking the wrong Ferreira leaves the party with no more seats than at dissolution.

The NDP in Davenport annoyed some regular NDP voters like me by telling people during canvassing that because of his last name they had “it locked up”. On our street I am aware that this attitude cost them about 10 votes.As I said before, I have even worked on recent campaigns and donated money but nobody ever gave me a call. They needed to be less cocky.

Interestingly enough, Tony now looks beatable and I suspect that if Ferreria ran again that many of those lost votes would come back just to get rid of the invisible Tony (even Liberals don’t know who he is.) The PC candidate looked embarassed to have John Tory on the front of his flyers but to his credit he did increase his vote. THe only one who dropped was Tony…maybe things can change.