Why Not Whynott?

The NDP majority government (yay!) is not the only the only thing that made history in Nova Scotia this week. This week, the riding of Hammonds Plains—Upper Sackville elected the youngest MLA in the history of the Nova Scotia legislature, Mat Whynott. He's 23 going on 24, beating the previous record set in the 1871.

Reading an article in the Chronicle-Herald about him today, I realized we actually have many things in common. For starters, we both have had an interest in politics from a young age. Whynott joined the NDP when he was 15. I almost joined the NDP when I was 14, the minimum age to attain party membership, but for some reason I waited. It worked out, since less than a year later, I would re-evaluate my opinions during the 2006 Liberal leadership contest. This event educated me on the finer points of the Chrétien and Martin governments often lost in opposition criticism, convinced me that the Liberals were a better party federally than the NDP, and introduced me to a certain candidate named Michael Ignatieff. I would be lying if I said Iggy did not play a large role in bringing me over to the Liberal side federally. Joining the debating team also played a large role by introducing me to the notion that big business is not inherently evil.

(Unfortunately for Stephen McNeil, no similar event occurred for me on a provincial level. I lost all faith in the NS Liberals during the tenure of Francis Mackenzie as leader, and the most exciting thing that came out of the convention that named McNeil as leader in 2007 was running into the federal leader, Stéphane Dion, in the Halifax airport as he was returning to Ottawa after speaking there. This all occurred while Darrell Dexter's NDP continued to become more and more centrist and moderate, meaning its values coincidentally changed at the same pace and at the same time mine did.)

Since all of the main political parties in Nova Scotia have one unified membership for both federal and provincial levels, I have not been able to commit to membership in either yet. If I had to choose, I would choose the federal Liberals over the provincial NDP, for the reasons that I plan to eventually run for Parliament and the fact that I don't know what the NS NDP will look like after Dexter retires. It seems Whynott has not had a similar episode of cognitive dissonance, which makes me a little envious.

There are still several other things Whynott and I have in common, if not our federal allegiances. He did a BA with a major in political science and a minor in French at Saint Mary’s University; I'm currently doing a combined honours in political science and French with a minor in law at Dalhousie. None of his high school classmates were surprised when he stood for election; on my end, there is already a Facebook group called "Keith for Prime Minister", and my political aspirations were even mentioned in a speech given by my former French teacher, Mme. Starratt, at my high school graduation when I was receiving the Governor General's Medal. On a less political note, we both listen to 96.5 Kool FM, and a co-worker of mine at the Dalhousie Registrar's Office Imaging Department, Jillian Smith, had Whynott as a reading buddy in elementary school. (The degrees of separation theory is frighteningly accurate sometimes.)

So, why is all of this comparison relevant, as opposed to just random observations on a Monday morning? The main issue for me is that because of Mat Whynott, a part of me feels like I'm lagging behind. Never mind the fact that I'm six years younger than him. He's travelled to Israel and Palestine to observe the conditions there, so I'll have to make a whirlwind tour of Tibet, Laos, Vietnam, and the Korean Demilitarized Zone before I turn 23 to match him. He's overseen an election in Trinidad and Tobago, so I'll have to oversee the next one in the tiny unrecognized country within Moldovan territory known as Transnistria. He's apparently addressed the UN, so now I have to address the United Federation of Planets. (If it means legally changing my name to Jean-Luc Picard and calling my vehicle of choice the USS Enterprise, then I will make it so.)

I'm rather stuck for now when it comes to running for election myself, however. Even if I were to join the Liberals tomorrow, there is already a very popular Liberal, Geoff Regan, serving as the MP for my riding of Halifax West, and I would not want to oppose him anyway. Even if Geoff quit, I'd still have a very tough nomination battle to fight. I would also have trouble running against the current MP for Halifax, Megan Leslie; despite the fact that she's a member of Jack Layton's team, I've met her and hold a great deal of respect for her. I don't have a particular connection to the NDP MP for Sackville—Eastern Shore, Peter Stoffer, but he has been a prominent supporter of a more moderate stance in the federal party, and it would be a massive uphill battle for a young, relatively inexperienced parachute candidate to win against such a popular MP who possesses legendary canvassing skills. Even if I end up going to McGill for law school and tried to run there, it would be very unlikely that a young Nova Scotian could even win the nomination for a Montreal riding, even disregarding the fact that many of them already have Liberal incumbents.

So, for the time being, it looks like Mat Whynott wins this bout. But, then again, it's not his record I'm really looking to beat. I have no intention of sitting in the Nova Scotia legislature at all. No, the record that truly matters to me is the one currently held by Joe Clark: Canada's youngest prime minister. And I have until I'm 39 to pull that one off.