NDP's Gerry Scott should be red-faced over Ray Lam's Facebook photos
Most of the public don't know who Gerry Scott is, but he's a familiar face to political insiders.
He is the former husband of Joy MacPhail, and he often plays major roles in NDP campaigns. He chaired the federal NDP campaign in B.C. in 2008, and he's cochair of the B.C. NDP campaign in the 2009 provincial election.
Scott also used to be the climate-change campaigner for the David Suzuki Foundation, which is rather odd considering that Suzuki and the NDP are now at odds over the B.C. carbon tax.
Last year, three rookie federal NDP candidates in B.C. stepped aside in the midst of the campaign that Scott headed:
* Dana Larsen because of video footage on the Internet of him driving while smoking a joint
* Kirk Tousaw because he was allegedly smoking marijuana
* Julian West because he had gone skinnydipping more than a decade ago with some teenagers in attendance
You would think that Scott would have asked rookie candidates this time if they had any skanky photos of themselves lurking in cyberspace, or if they had been consuming illegal substances on videotape.
Maybe he did. But for some reason, rookie NDP candidate Ray Lam's photos of him cavorting with friends in a sexually provocative way somehow eluded the NDP brass until the story broke recently in the news.
The photos were on Lam's "private" Facebook page, and today he stepped down as the NDP candidate in Vancouver-False Creek.
This blooper will derail the NDP campaign for a day. The media will splash the photos for all to see. Other hardworking NDP candidates will lose a bit of momentum. And it's all because the provincial campaign didn't do its homework on a rookie candidate.
We should live in a world where some harmless fun doesn't force a candidate to have to resign. But the reality is there are a lot of prudes out there—including in the electronic media—and they will focus on this to the exclusion of serious issues 10 times out of 10.
And that's why campaign teams should prevent this nonsense from derailing a party from focusing on its key message.
Today, the NDP released some hardhitting ads in advance of their broadcast later this week. I can't believe that the NDP would have made this decision today—when the Canucks were playing the Blues and the newscasts were the last thing on most people's minds. But they had to get something out there to reduce the sting of a candidate's resignation.
Vancouver-False Creek was already the Green party's best bet with its deputy leader, small businessman Damian Kettlewell, carrying the flag.
Now, he's in even better shape, with a genuine shot at winning. It's not what the NDP needs right now: a young, articulate, and media-savvy Green party MLA who has the potential to use his prominence in the legislature to swing a lot more NDP voters his way in the future.
And it could all be because the NDP campaign officials didn't check out Lam's Facebook page before the election campaign began. Imagine that: the Greens might elect their first MLA thanks to some rank incompetence by the NDP brass, who failed to apply the lessons learned during last year's federal campaign.
Comments
17 Comments
Michael Geoghegan
Apr 19, 2009 at 9:42pm
This story proves a point I made on my blog three months ago
http://mgcltd.blogspot.com/2009/01/crotch-shot-hypothesis-and-politics-o...
Hannah
Apr 19, 2009 at 9:46pm
This is ridiculous! Good luck finding politicians within our future generations if you have to have never done anything publicly that hints at sexuality in your life. I thought we were done with priests?
I would have more respect for the politician that stands firm and runs the course. Bowing down for something as little as this is tells me that person is easily swayed and therefore has no place in politics.
seth
Apr 19, 2009 at 10:55pm
Get serious Smith.
The only thing Kettlewell is going to do is make sure the Liberal candidate wins.
The NDP doesn't have millions of dollars to hire private dicks to check out candidates legends. They have to make do with the candidate disclosure.
We all have stuff in our background that is as bad or worse than any of the examples you listed - you do, I do and I'm sure 90% of the candidates in all parties do. They just hope and pray that the mainstream media scum don' t find it.
Perfectly legal nude photos, intemperate remarks, tasteless jocks, a bad relationship, too much partying twenty years ago, a teen romance gone bad - all fodder for the scum in our mainstream press.
The remaining candidates are so boring they could sell their speeches as cures for insomniacs.
seth
Michael R
Apr 20, 2009 at 5:16am
I wish the NDP would stop being so spineless and just stand up and say "Enough of this nonsense." Ray Lam looks pretty young in those photos, and we've all been silly in our youth. The only difference is that we live in an age when more of our silliness is being caught on camera. If the pic was taken yesterday, sure, he should resign for just being politically stupid. But in the underwear photo, he doesn't look like he's at an age where he's thinking about a political career. Lam was honourable in stepping down immediately, but his leader should have supported him and refused the resignation. I'm tired of Carole James pandering to the lowest common denominator. "Joe Public" is much more savvy and cosmopolitan than she gives credit for.
Michael Here
Apr 20, 2009 at 8:10am
This is crazy - what sort of lunatic prudes re we talking about - really? harmless photos like this?
THIS PROVINCE IS FULL of HICKS and BUMPKINS if this is what passes for political knowledge.
spartikus
Apr 20, 2009 at 9:13am
What a <a href="http://www.mugshots.com/Hall%20of%20Shame/Gordon+Campbell.htm">shocking picture</a>.
Also, Ray Lam probably shouldn't have posted those pics to Facebook, but no lives were endangered, and to perfectly honest I don't see how this would have swayed the voters of Vancouver-False Creek. Not exactly the Bible Belt, eh?
Liz Argitos
Apr 20, 2009 at 10:19am
This is rediculous. He steps down, yet Gordon Campbell was caught driving impaired while he was running the province, and he just gives a sappy little "I'm sorry"?
Mark Haines
Apr 20, 2009 at 10:35am
This is so stupid. What about Gordon Campbell's famous picture associated with an illegal behaviour that threatens other peoples lives? He didn't resign, neither should Ray for such harmful photos that I am sure 95% of us (including other candidates!) have similar ones on our own facebook profiles. What about the issues? How about the Liberals destroying the environment in this province and selling our public resources and rivers to private corporations? What about the school closures and failing health care system? God forbid we should actually care about the things that affect our lives! No, we have to be preoccupied about some photos of a young man having fun with his friends, doing nothing illegal and if anything demonstrating a healthy social life.
Name removed by moderator
Apr 20, 2009 at 11:20am
this is petty puppy shit. who cares what happened in a bar. There's plenty of politician's visiting strip joints, cavorting with prostitutes in their own offices, and making "extracurricular" visits to them (A.I.D.S. is spreading fastest among heterosexual married women in the suburbs: tell you anything?), going to "massage parlors" who cater to everything below the waistline, (tell you something?) and claiming it as a deduction for a "business lunch." And the taxpayers pay for it all. Ray Lam is a wuss and a twit and shoulda' stayed the course and enjoyed more of the perks of being in office than taking the heat for this petty nonsense. What a joke!
cosmicstraight
Apr 20, 2009 at 1:09pm
You beat me to it, spartikus. If we're going to talk about photos of candidates engaged in "inappropriate behavior," Campbell's mugshot surely tops that list. Oddly, he didn't feel he needed to resign for the actions that lead to that photo. We can only hope the "experts" he consulted were able to clear up the matter of whether or not he has an alcohol problem for him.
As for the need for the NDP to vet their candidates more thoroughly, where are we going to draw the line? A few weeks ago, the provincial Liberals in Nova Scotia attempted to derail NDP candidate Lenore Zann's campaign by distributing photos of her appearing top-free in an episode of The L Word. Imagine that. A woman with *breasts.* And she's not even ashamed of it!
The funny part is that most of us would never have seen the photo of Lam had Mary McNeil not drawn everyone's attention to it. Same goes for Zann's appearance on the L Word. Chances are if you're watching that show, you're not going to be bother by a pair of breasts.
Yet here are these half-wits pointing and scoffing and showing us all how ignorant and regressive they are. Almost as pathetic as the NDP once again falling all over itself to apologize for something that doesn't warrant it.
Time to get some grown-ups in government for a change.