Freedom Flyer 6

TORONTO - Sarnia and Woodstock are in the running for the annual convention of one of Ontario's official political parties this fall.

No, Frank Miller hasn't been pushed aside. You won't see Larry Grossman, Dennis Timbrell, Alan Pope or Andy Brandt splitting the seats in the Perry Street Arena in Woodstock for their delegates, or renting opulent hospitality suites in the Oxford Hotel.

The Ontario Libertarian Party, one of the eight officially registered parties in Ontario, is looking for sites and dates for its fall convention. Sarnia and Woodstock, the only ridings in Southwestern Ontario where the Libertarians ran candidates May 2, are challenging Toronto to be picked as the site of the annual convention. Sarnia candidate Margaret Coe is considering a run at the leadership.

The Libertarians ran 17 candidates, who totalled a shade less than 13,000 votes among them. The top candidate was party leader Scott Bell in York Mills, who managed 2,339 votes or 6.22 per cent in the riding held by Tory MPP Bette Stephenson. In touting Bell's success, the party newsletter misspelled Stephenson's name as Stevenson, but they'll have hordes of civil servants to get the spelling right on their news releases when they form the government.

On the other hand, the Libertarians devoutly believe in less government, so they may still be writing their own news releases when they're in power.

Only five candidates bettered Coe's 2.58 per cent share of the vote, while Oxford candidate Kaye Sargent was right behind her with 2.2 per cent. The party newsletter claims Sargent would have doubled her vote had the Rhinos not run a candidate in Oxford, a strange claim for a supposedly serious political movement to make.

The Libertarians are crowing that only the Liberals enjoyed the Libertarians' kind of success May 2. The Tories lost 20 seats and the NDP gain of four seats constitutes outright rejection by voters, the Libertarians reasoned. The Green Party, say the Libertarians, did poorly because of organizational squabbling, the Communists "got their usual low numbers per candidate," and the London-based Freedom Party of Ontario had 1.45 per cent of the vote in three London ridings, which the Libertarians considered disappointing "after a 1982 municipal campaign and several years of excellent local publicity."

Hmmm ... well, we usually spelled Marc Emery's name right.