LONDON, ONT. — Let them talk all they want about 905 and 519 and 819 and 604 deciding this federal election.
The magic number here is 868.
That was the margin of victory in January of 2006 when Irene Mathyssen managed what seemed the impossible - to slap a small dab of orange onto the big-blue-with-just-a-hint-of-red canvas that surrounds and includes the city of London in Southwestern Ontario.
To win for the New Democrats in this bastion of conservatism with its small smattering of liberalism, you need serious outside help. And when some comes along, Irene Mathyssen tends to take advantage of it.
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In eight campaigns for public office, she has won but twice, first in 1990 when she ran provincially and the electorate got so wound up putting the boots to David Peterson's Liberals they didn't realize they were also kicking in Bob Rae's New Democrats.
Nearly three years ago, she barely nipped Glen Pearson, who had been expected to be a Liberal star candidate in London-Fanshawe, when the sponsorship scandal, the RCMP investigation into financial dealings and a botched national campaign opened the door once again to the feisty little redhead with the orange signs.
Pearson - tagged "The Last Decent Man in Ottawa" by Maclean's magazine - subsequently ran in a by-election, won, and is today running to hold his London North Centre seat. Mathyssen's main competition this time comes from Jacquie Gauthier, a bubbly, bilingual morning radio host who has been knocking on doors since January.
That the Liberals take their chances in London-Fanshawe seriously was evidenced during recent campaigning when party heavies from the national office, the House of Commons and Queen's Park showed up to launch Gauthier in what they firmly believe will be a return of the seat to its usual colour.
Ontario Attorney-General Chris Bentley turned the occasion into a near-revival meeting when he singled out 30 volunteers and commanded them to produce "one extra vote each day."
That would be 30 votes a day for 30 days - the 900 votes necessary to erase the 868 that cost them the seat in 2006.
"Just one vote!" Bentley called repeatedly. "Just one vote!"
It is, of course, never quite so simple as one vote. It is impossible to gauge the effect of the hastily named Conservative candidate - long-time party worker and campaign manager Mary Lou Ambrogio - in an election that, at the moment, seems to be turning in favour of Stephen Harper. There is also the Green Party factor, which is likely to take more votes away from the NDP than the other parties.
Both Mathyssen and Gauthier are also running into a testy electorate. Knocking on doors, Mathyssen found herself hugged at one door while the entire election was slammed at the next.
"People do not want an election," Gauthier agrees.
What they do want is job protection, and that is the overwhelming issue in this riding that combines working class and middle class and thousands of jobs directly and indirectly connected to Ontario's manufacturing and auto industries.
"People are terrified," says Mathyssen.
A non-issue, at least so far, is Mathyssen's one shining - burning? - moment in the spotlight during her brief time in Parliament. Rather than being recognized for her work in extending funding to needy social agencies, she became briefly famous for accusing James Moore, the Conservative member for the British Columbia riding of Port Moody-Westwood-Port Coquitlam, of looking at "scantily clad" women on his laptop computer as he sat in the House of Commons.
She rose in the House the next day to demand he apologize, accusing Moore of being "disrespectful" of women and Parliament and connecting the "objectifying" of women to violence and abuse - only to have it turn out that Moore was actually staring at a photograph of his fiancée.
Instead of the issue becoming about what, exactly, MPs do while supposedly on House business, it became an issue of Mathyssen overreacting: one headline tagged her "The NDP's Nosey Nanny."
Mathyssen apologized both directly to Moore and to the House, yet feels the tempest has yet to blow itself fully out of the teacup.
"I expect I'll hear something about it from both the Conservative and Liberal at the all-candidates meetings," she says resignedly. "But so be it."
Gauthier says if it happens, it won't come from her. "It's certainly not in my game plan," she says. "I want to run a really clean, positive campaign."
For that to happen anywhere in the country seems, at the moment, somewhat remote - but even more so in a very tight riding like London-Fanshawe, where the race is so close today it can no more easily be called in 2008 than it was back in 2006, when those 868 votes made the difference.
"The object is to increase the margin," says Mathyssen, who pauses before correcting herself.
"No," she says, "I guess to win is the first objective - then to increase the margin of victory.
"No point in being greedy."
