David Lewis David Lewis was seen as the front runner by the media. He had worked for either the NDP and its forerunner, the
Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, for almost 36 years. He was the National Secretary from 1936 until 1950, when he moved from Ottawa to Toronto to set up a labour law practice. and was fluently bilingual. Entering the race in November 1970, he turned forty years old during the campaign, and like the other candidates, was essentially a generation younger than David Lewis. Like Broadbent, he was a university professor, and later at York University, teaching English literature. He was the Provincial Secretary for the Ontario New Democratic Party from 1966 to 1970. In that time, he was also the campaign manager for that party's breakthrough campaign in the
1967 general election. However, he had a major disadvantage compared to some of the other candidates: at the time of the leadership campaign, he did not hold elected office, and had been defeated in four previous attempts to get elected to the House of Commons. The Quebec issue, and much of the fall-out from weeks of debating it before the convention, pulled Harney away from the issues that he was trying to get debated, notably regulating financial institutions to use their wealth to promote programs that had social benefits for all, and following the Ontario NDP's plan for nationalizing resource industries.
Frank Howard Of all of Lewis' challengers,
Frank Howard was the oldest at 45, still considerably younger than Lewis' 61 years, and the only one not from Ontario. He entered the leadership campaign in January 1971, attacking the Waffle for what he perceived to be their political naiveté. At the time, he had served in the Commons for 14 years, one of the last CCF MPs left from the
1957 federal election, representing the
Skeena electoral district. He was known for his caustic, no-nonsense approach to politics, and was frequently in trouble with the Speaker of the House of Commons. He also had a criminal record for armed robbery, committed when he was 18. This naturally led him to espousing penal reform as one of his main platform items. His other platform plank included support for native-Canadian issues, or in the parlance of the time, Indian Affairs. He did not spend much time campaigning before the convention, and even went on a two-week parliamentary trip to Australia and New Zealand in March. His strategy was to win delegate support at the convention in the days leading up to the Saturday vote.
James (Jim) Laxer James Laxer was the youngest candidate, at 29 years old. He was the Waffle's candidate for leader, and he espoused their ultra-nationalistic left-wing views. He came from a family that had been keen supporters of the Communist Party of Canada, until 1956, when Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev made public Josef Stalin's reign of terror. In the mid-1960s, he was the president of
Canadian University Press, and was a lecturer at Queen's University during the campaign. He was married to Krista Maeots, who ran unsuccessfully for the NDP's presidency at the 1969 policy convention. She was also a leading figure in the Waffle movement. He did not hold elected office, but because all the candidates were debating the Waffle's issues he was effectively Lewis' main challenger. ==Declined==