What about that Liberal national executive meeting?

News of Bob Rae’s decision not to contest the permanent leadership overshadowed what would otherwise have been the major story in Liberal circles Wednesday: the much-awaited meeting of the Liberal Party of Canada’s national executive to make decisions on leadership matters.

A short e-mail did go out in the evening from party president Mike Crawley, and here’s the only real bit of news it contains:

Tonight, we have narrowed down the possible date for the leadership vote to April 2013.During last June’s Extraordinary Convention delegates voted to set the leadership vote between March 1 and June 30, 2013. Per our Party’s Constitution, it is the Board’s job to select a precise date.

As such, we have tasked an Ad Hoc Leadership Vote and Expense Committee to focus its efforts on finding a suitable date in the month of April. This date will be confirmed over the summer.

I read the e-mail and honestly my reaction was, that’s it? You’ve just given us the month it would be held? I’m fine with doing it in April (earlier the better, I feel); that’s not it. I was just hoping to hear more about the rules for entering the race, the entry fee, the spending cap, that sort of thing. So just getting the month the vote will take place was rather a let-down.

If it wasn’t for Rae’s news coming yesterday I think this would have gotten much more attention. Issues such as the rules, and particularly the spending cap and entry fee, will have a tremendous impact on how large the field will be. And I think possible candidates are waiting for this information before they decide whether to jump in or not. Hopefully it will be forthcoming soon.

My personal preference is for a fee that’s high enough to stop the field from getting unwieldy, with a low enough spending cap that candidates can do what they have to do without incurring heavy debts and sucking all the wind out of party fundraising efforts. Over at Pundit’s Guide, Alice offers some lessons learned from the NDP’srecent race.

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