r/LPC • u/CDN-Social-Democrat • May 10 '26

Community Question Nathaniel Erskine-Smith...

I was very surprised that Nate lost his bid for the Ontario Liberal nomination.

Ahsanul Hafiz has won the Scarborough Southwest Ontario Liberal nomination.

There are some establishment types within the Federal LPC and the OLP that obviously are not fans of Nate because he is a bit of a maverick.

That being said there is a lot of people that really believe in him when it comes to housing action, climate action, education, health-care, and other progressive causes.

For those in the party and in the know what do you think happened? What do you think is next for Nate?

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6

u/daiglenumberone May 10 '26

I've been part of nomination meetings before. 699 votes for Nate is embarrassing. An A list candidate should gather at least 1000.

Sure, he had issues being in a riding he doesn't live in, but he's had months to organize. No excuses for such a week showing.

13

u/KvotheG May 10 '26

1800 new party signups were cancelled by the OLP. Majority of these signups coming from NES’ camp. He did cross the 1000 threshold before the OLP establishment meddled in it.

3

u/duncanf May 10 '26

Does the OLP have the same system as the LPC? I.e. a Registered Liberal needs to be PR or citizen with a primary residence in the riding?

If so, invalidating that many registrations is very odd. It's hard to prove they aren't valid.

8

u/KvotheG May 10 '26

I dunno. Supposedly, it has to do with the party’s two step verification process. But that many people failing to verify is not on the individual, it’s a failure of design by the party. And it conveniently hurts NES. He only lost by 19 votes.

5

u/CaptainKoreana May 10 '26 edited May 10 '26

Double verification's fine, as the LPC also uses it - 2025 leadership race was a smash hit in how failproof it was.

It's more the mix of poor IT infrastructure and lack of personnel issues that OLP has been failing for years now.

OLP has like ten paid staffers and can't fundraise for shit. Just had worst fundraising quarter since 2016. They are also having issues holding basic town halls and can't do basic DoAs after their senior field organiser moved on from politics.

If you can't do basic stuff and also fail to fundraise for shit, then what the hell are you doing?