Hedy Fryed

Power Corporation is hard at work buying up the lesser competitors and merging them into its fastest-growing subsidiary, Call Me Bob (TM).

With the acquisition of True Grit, however, market analysts are burning their forecasts on their front lawns as we speak:

EKOS surveyed 1,053 Liberal party members last week, using party membership lists obtained by the Toronto Star. (EKOS president Frank) Graves said there was a "very careful screening process" to ensure each person was an active Liberal party member. Results are considered accurate to within 3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

A screening process that no doubt required an EKG, a CAT scan, and a boot to the head, just to make sure the members were alive as opposed to merely active.

Yet even with that advantage, Hedy Fry could not inspire living Liberals to breathe life into her campaign:

Graves noted that the bottom four candidates — Brison, Eglinton-Lawrence MP Joe Volpe, Toronto lawyer Martha Hall Findlay and Vancouver MP Hedy Fry — received only 6 per cent support as the first, second or third choice of respondents.

"(They) cannot be considered contenders," he said, adding the bottom four appeared to have little chance of having "any real impact" on the outcome of the vote.

Not a single respondent chose Fry.

"There were over 3,000 opportunities for people to pick her (as first, second or third choice)," said Graves.

"She literally got zero. I have never seen that in over 20 years of polling."

With a three percent margin of error, that means Hedy Fry could have had negative three percent of Liberals polled supporting her, perhaps from the dead who wouldn't swing at Joe Volpe's pitch.

Even Ernst Zundel hung on long enough to make a convention speech before quitting with zero votes. And he'd do infinitely better today just by touting his unquestioned anti-Israel credentials.

Poor Hedy. A failure at every turn. And not even the comic relief of the campaign.