When Sandra Pupatello stepped down from MPP in Windsor West, I have to admit that I have gone through the gamut of whether I should throw my hat into the ring of running for MPP.

Now lets ask my critics to forget about me personally for a moment, whether I would personally make an MPP, electability and my character. I will come back to that at the end but what I wanted to write about was the experience of deciding itself.

I’m fortunate enough to have several of the requirements to be electable.
A very high profile in the community,
A wealth of experience in several different areas,
A bit of my own financial cushion to support myself during the campaign period as well as even finance certain aspects of my campaign.

but even more than that I have amassed a true wealth of friends who I could turn to during this time that were able to give me some advice. I now reflect on and am truly grateful and actually humbled that I could speak to so many highly intelligent people from all over the political spectrum.

Without naming names I wanted to share some of that advice. Some of the information I had learned over the course of my 10+ years volunteering for political campaigns but never had I had it summarized in such an insightful way

First off, was looking at what party to choose.

Independent - As much as that would be my first choice, we’re not ready to elect independent MPP’s in Windsor West yet. From the last federal election we saw more than ever how people voted party and in some cases did not even know who their individual candidate was. Electing barmaids in Quebec who didn’t speak french.
One friend was able to explain the roll of the candidate

Conservative - I’m a fiscal conservative, social liberal but there’s a few problems with conservatives. They talk a tough talk about cuts but its easy to talk about cuts to education until a strike threatens losing a school year, (HECK, even if the strike gets solved before school year is lost, how good was the education to that child if we’re already suffering from too few classroom hours)
If one of the cuts resulted in a massive strike or closure to my business, I dunno how long I could withstand losing money before I buckled, and how ever long I held out, 90% would cave into demands before me

It infuriates me when people say they’re gonna save through attrition, or simply cutting waste. I want my taxes cut as much as any business and property owner in ONtario but as far as I’m concerned its all BS until someone specifies where those savings will be found or what services will be cut.

One conservative told me that no one will feel pain as cuts will happen through retirement and not affect services. I asked him what if half of an entire department was cut, how could he ensure services would be maintained.

I consider myself a free market advocate and a capitalist like my father before me only I have learned through my experience that the best downtowns are managed downtowns and regulation has its purpose. Purchasing monopolies and crony capitalism is also not my idea of running things like a business.

Liberal - I’ve been very critical of late, I can’t condone the secrecy of caledonia settlement, the fake pay freeze followed by a 7% pay raise, the hidden 1% public service fee, smart meter, eco fee.
Its not as much the policies as a pattern of contempt for the electorate. For example, DRIC created Jobs are a great thing but do you have to inflate the numbers to some absurdly indefensible figure? When you see politicians don’t even try to repeat or defend them, or a smirk and change of subject its like we’re not even worth lying to anymore. Could I toe the line? not even a chance. Doesn’t make me a traitor to liberals, it makes them a traitor to me. I still share so many liberal values, Its not that I left the party, I think the party left me.

NDP - Nah, still too nuts for me.

Green - This piqued my interest for about a minute, the environmentally friendly greens are actually quite the business friendly party. My investigation of starting a BALLE chapter (business alliance for local living economies) would be a nice basis for my run but my large carbon footprint would simply subject my family to too much ridicule. (restaurants can be some of the most enviironmentally wasteful businesses and my owning a pickup truck and SUV personally wouldn’t help.

Wanted to split this up, but think of it as background for the advice and wisdom my friends of all parties gave I thought was fascinating