Kim Rudd met some supporters yesterday at the Market building in Cobourg. Small crowd-small room, medium crowd-medium room and large crowd-large room; so goes the mantra. Well the Market Building is not small and not big so the crowd was a respectable number, less than Andrew's crowd but all these folks were from Cobourg and didn't drive in - about fifty all told and more people under the age of sixty - just.

A summery crowd and summery crowds don't expect long political speeches and they didn't get one. When I told Kim that Andrew had spoken for nine minutes she said, "I'll be shorter." After an introduction by Penny "I haven't read your blog as much as I have in these last three weeks" Crawford, Kim got down to business. Laying her personal life bare and outlining her CV and then tying those two topics to a pledge, "I intend to what I have been doing and take it to a higher level." That higher level is the big sandbox of Federal Politics where she sees a lack of recognition for the Riding's ills. Citing her experience, as the President of the local Chamber of Commerce, she explains, "We have to do business differently." as well as calling for an improvement to the volunteer community. Her political agenda will be to create "Healthy Communities".

Impressions that stayed after I had left: the party establishment was not present but the young turks were - Peter Cleary, armed with DSLR was obviously snapping pics for the Facebook and website content. One onlooker told me that Kim had "edge" and he thought that was a good sign. One sign of voters searching for choices as opposed to voter confirmation, was a man leaving the hall as I was going in - he had been to see Andrew and was still looking for a decision. And more importantly for Kim was that the membership signup table was busy. Finally; another capable candidate. But, if I were an uncommitted Liberal I would want to see them all in campaign mode as opposed to the kissy kissy stuff that is necessary for a nomination. The real test is twofold, more signups that the other guys and a barnburner of a speech at the nomination meeting.