Reply #1: update -- about 2 dozen people showed up at the meeting

[Lisa]

Around 20 of them voted for Andrew Lewis. (One of the early news reports said "84%" without mentioning the exact number ... by coincidence I was at an event with Julian West, who's running for the NDP in the same riding -- Julian's a mathematician by training, and sure enough, that's about what it works out to!)

Julian pointed out to me that although in the past there have been "arrangements" where a national political party decided not to run a candidate in the riding where an opposing party's leader was running, that was not at all a standard rule, but viewed as a professional courtesy. To have this happen in a riding where Elizabeth May herself isn't actually running would be a bit of a departure, that's for sure.

For the non-Saanich folks out there -- the Liberals decided to go with Briony Penn (a local environmentalist/author) this time, perhaps hoping to attract enough green-ish votes to knock off Conservative Gary Lunn (currently the Natural Resources Minister). The NDP candidate the last couple of times, Jennifer Burgis, is running in Esquimalt/Juan de Fuca.

Local paper (Times-Colonist) coverage:

http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/story.html?id=f8e979ef-aa47-472a-ba70-cc916c78b293&k=58693