Shawn Graham
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Shawn Graham (born February 22, 1968 in Kent County, New Brunswick, Canada) is a New Brunswick politician. He currently serves as Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick.
Graham, the son of Alan Graham who was the longest serving member of the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick from 1967-1998, was elected to replace his retiring father in a by-election in 1998. Following the general election of 1999, Graham's Liberal Party was reduced to 10 seats from 44. This gave the young politician the chance to rise to prominence.
He was named the caucus chair of the party and became one of the most vocal and popular critics of the government of Bernard Lord.
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Leadership campaign
Liberal leader Camille Theriault resigned in March of 2001, and a leadership convention was set from May of 2002. Few candidates emerged for this campaign and it appeared that former cabinet minister Paul Duffie would win virtually unopposed. Graham was urged to run, and eventually entered the race with the support of Greg Byrne, a previous leadership contender, and many of the supporters of Bernard Richard, also a former leadership contender and the interim leader following the resignation of Theriault.
Surprising many pundits, Graham was successful in taking a solid lead during delegate selection meetings in February and March of 2002, and, as a result, Duffie dropped out of the race. This left only fringe candidate Jack MacDougall in the race who Graham defeated by a 3 to 1 margin at the May convention.
Toward the 2003 election
As leader, Graham was considered a lightweight by pundits and by the governing Progressive Conservative Party, and few gave him a chance in the coming election. Although Graham's Liberal Party of New Brunswick and the PCs were near each other in the polls, Graham was a relative unknown and trailed Premier Bernard Lord by significant margins when people were asked "who would you rather as premier?".
Graham surprised pundits again during the 2003 election, running an energetic campaign and winning 26 of 55 seats, just two short of the Conservatives, and coming within 1% of the Conservatives in the popular vote. Pundits said Graham and Lord had fought the English language debate to a draw, while they viewed Graham as the winner of the French debate; this was despite the fact that Lord was a francophone and that Graham's less than stellar command of French was viewed as one of his largest liabilities. Moreover, it was universally agreed by the punditry that the Liberals had controlled the agenda of the campaign, always keeping their three key issues: public automobile insurance, public health care and public power in the forefront of the agenda.
Graham often cited the fact that had 10 votes swong from the Conservatives to the Liberals in the riding of Kennebecasis there would have been a 27-27 tie which may have led to a Liberal minority government supported by the New Democrats whose one member would have held the balance of power. Graham was quoted on election night saying "until five minutes ago, I thought I was going to be premier".
Graham's leadership questioned
Despite his victories, the governing Tories and the media continued to view Graham as weak. Rumours suggested that Graham was being pressured to step aside in favour of either Mike Murphy, Kelly Lamrock or Andy Savoy.
Following a by-election victory by the Liberals on October 4, 2004, Graham took a more aggressive stance to dispel this belief. He named a new chief of staff and replaced a third of his staff on October 28, 2004 while pledging to defeat the government and force an election in the next session of the legislature. Graham's upward momentum continued when, in an opinion poll released on December 9, 2004, the Liberals expanded their lead over the Conservatives to 46% to 36%, but also, for the first time since Graham became leader, he was the preferred choice of New Brunswickers for premier beating the incumbent Bernard Lord 34% to 27%. A further poll some months later showed that Graham continued to hold a lead over Lord but by a smaller margin.
In the spring session of the legislature, Graham attempted to pass a snap motion of no confidence on during his speech on the budget. There was brief excitement on Liberal benches as less than half of the government caucus was present for Graham's speech, however the speaker ruled that the vote would be held along with the main budget motion at the end of the following week. Graham was criticised because when the vote was held two of his members were absent. Graham defended their absence arguing that, because New Democratic Party leader Elizabeth Weir was also absent, it was impossible to defeat the government, and he did not see the need to whip his members.
Graham's victory in a subsequent by election on November 14 2005 as well as his continued lead in opinion polls led most to end their criticism of his leadership.
Towards the next election
Throughout the term that began following the 2003 election, Graham has worked hard to portray himself and his caucus as a "government-in-waiting". Since the Lord government introduced controversial health reforms in the spring of 2004, Graham has said he would force an election at his earliest opportunity.
Image:Paulmartin-shawngraham.jpg
His strategy has been to focus heavily on policy, and his party has introduced a record number of pieces of legislation for an opposition party. This is particularly remarkable because New Brunswick members of the legislature receive no professional drafting staff to assist them in writing private members' bills.
In addition to his legislative agenda, Graham and the Liberals lauched a series of regional policy meetings culminating in a policy convention in the fall of 2005. Graham also convened a meeting of all of the Liberal leaders of Atlantic Canada to discuss common policy objectives, engaged in several tours of the province on particular policy issues and took several trips to Ottawa to meet with federal ministers on various issues.
In early 2006, Graham set out on a tour of the northeast United States, Washington, D.C. and the Maritimes to promote New Brunswick as an "energy hub" and his idea of building a second reactor at the Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station.
On February 17 2006, Bernard Lord's government was reduced to a minority when Michael Malley crossed the floor to sit as an independent. Graham said, if Malley would support the Liberals, he would have brought down the government on an April 7 2006 budget vote forcing an early election. Malley was subsequently elected speaker however, creating an equality of government and opposition members; the April 7 vote came to a tie which was broken in favour of the government by Malley in accordance with tradition.
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