Interesting developments, to say the least, in the federal incarnation of the Don Valley West riding.
With a little more than a week to go before the March 2 nomination meeting, the race to see who will carry the riding's Liberal banner in the wake of the resignation of longtime MP John Godfrey appears to be actually just that: a race. No fewer than six candidates have put their names forward for consideration.
Unusual? The number of candidates alone would suggest yes. A normally staid process, these affairs - choosing a party candidate - are more often than not coronations rather than competitions. Indeed, they are often simply acclamations - literally in addition to figuratively.
This time around, however, the outcome does not appear to be so clear-cut. Among the candidates are former Liberal MP Sarmite Bulte, who lost a hard-fought battle in Parkdale-High Park in the 2006 vote to New Democrat Peggy Nash. Then there's Deborah Coyne, who lost to NDP leader Jack Layton in Toronto-Danforth in the same vote. The list of candidates does not stop there, however. The ballot also includes local businessman Mohammad Ijaz, former David Peterson adviser and United Church minister Rob Oliphant, senior economist with the Ontario government Jonathan Mousley and seniors housing advocate Ian Cameron.
Aside from an unusually high number of candidates, the race has been further spiced up by accusations from the Coyne camp of improper recruiting of new party members. Those accusations, directed at the Oliphant and Bulte camps, have been strongly denied.
Now, there's nothing new about infighting within a political party. History is littered with countless examples of those kinds of occurrences.
What makes this interesting, however, is what emerges from the March 2 meeting. Let's face it: it's no secret that this area (and certainly not just Don Valley West) has been awash in Liberal red federally since 1993. Based on this trend, whoever emerges as the choice to be the party candidate stands a reasonable chance - fairly or unfairly - of being the riding's next Member of Parliament.
Last October, during the provincial election, the riding was front and centre as Progressive Conservative leader John Tory took a considerable - yet laudable - risk when he took on Liberal Education Minister Kathleen Wynne.
The riding is popular once again but this time around, if past trends are any indication, this popularity may fade well before for the public at large to cast their ballots to send their pick to Ottawa.