But Seriously

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Less than two weeks to go and I don't have a clue who I'm going to be voting for on election day.

My preferred candidate is no longer in the picture it turns out.

It was a crushing blow.

It's not the usual departure either. He didn't misspeak in a campaign speech or write something tasteless on his blog. And there are no rumours of infidelity or a pending investigation into questionable financial dealings.

What can I say? He's a solid citizen.

There's only one problem. He was never even in the race in the first place. Oops.

It was an honest mistake, folks. I had no way of knowing.

Election campaigning in Canada is half-hearted at best. We hear from the honchos running for prime minister and that's it.

Fact is, the majority of the time we don't find out who the candidates are in our ridings until we see the ballot.

In the last federal election there were like nine on mine. I couldn't believe it. I barely recognized one name. It was that of the incumbent, I think, whose name escapes me at the moment, but I am hopeful it will seem familiar to me on Oct. 14 when I go to the polls.

But I digress. Back to the matter at hand: my pick this time around.

As usual, I hadn't received any literature in the mail, or phone calls or visits from any of the candidates, so I chose the only option left to me, I took a stroll through the neighborhood on Saturday to see if there were any signs out on the lawns.

I was in luck. There were a bunch. More than I'd ever seen before, in fact. What's more, they featured just one name. They all read: Elect Mookie.

I was intrigued, to say the least.

A candidate so confident in himself he uses only his nickname? How cool is that?

Perhaps I've got politics all wrong, I thought to myself. Maybe it's hip, after all.

I wasn't sure what party Mookie was running for, or any of his platforms, but his brashness had struck a chord with me. He had my vote. I was more pumped to go to the polls than I had ever been in my life.

Well, my excitement was short-lived. I strolled into Tim Hortons with a big smile on my face and started asking around about Mookie and discovered much to my embarrassment that he wasn't running for a seat in Parliament after all. It seems he was a contestant for Canadian Idol.

He finished fifth, apparently. It was between him and Drew that night and Drew stayed and made it to the top four.

That was nearly two months ago, to boot. Yet, he still has a massive following in my neighborhood and in a lot of others from what I understand. "Elect Mookie" signs remain all over the GTA.

He has charisma, no doubt about it.

Well, I don't know how his music career is going, but my guess is that if things don't pick up on the campaign trail soon and the real candidates don't get in the game, Mookie could be a write-in on a lot of ballots.

Maybe even mine, unless I go for the incumbent, if I can figure out who the heck he or she is.

You can reach Jamie at jamie.wayne@sympatico.ca.