Hiding agendas

Blogger Koby here and here discusses again the question of why Cindy Silver, Conservative nominee in North Vancouver has removed the endorsement of Sharon Hayes from her webpage (see here). Apparently Ms. Silver's web-people have made it so that the google cache was purged (for the method, see here).

The point is not trivial one. The decision to get one person or another to endorse a candidate may be a bit arbitrary, but the decision to remove one is less so. To go to the effort of covering-up the fact that an endorsement ever existed surely suggests a clearly defined objective here: to obscure Ms. Silver's association with Focus for the Family and its director Sharon Hayes. (For some speculation about what it is in Ms. Hayes past that is so embarrassing see Koby.)

Part of this is a campaign decision. Clearly Cindy Silver wants to minimize her association with Focus with the Family, for whom she worked. And so, in the recent piece about her in the North Shore News:

Another woman tells her that she's praying Stephen Harper will get in - literally. "Prayer will do it," she says, smiling.

Truthfully, it's not the kind of comment Silver is keen to receive in public.

Silver is still smarting from an opinion column in the Globe and Mail several months ago that described her as a member of the "religious right." Much of the controversy stems from Silver's five-year stint as in-house lawyer for Focus on the Family, a group which has lobbied against gay marriage and been active on other social issues.

Silver says that was a job and she does not share all of the views of the organization, such as those on abortion. "I'm for respectful disagreement," she says.

Silver says she would have preferred to see gay marriage handled as a "civil union" - a position also put forward in the past by Bell - but isn't eager to see the issue come back to Parliament now the law has been changed. If it does, she'll poll her constituents and vote accordingly, she says.

It is difficult to know where to start here. She seems to want to describe herself as a moderate on both same-sex marriage and on abortion. There are, however, reasons to doubt this. I'll try to return this to explain why in another post.

For other Cindy Silver posts, follow the link.