Sheila Copps: nobody’s candidate

A repentant Liberal insider, part of the Martin team that forced former deputy prime minister Sheila Copps into a bruising nomination battle with Tony Valeri, says the party recently asked Copps—who held Hamilton East for 20 years—to run again. “They’ve realized she’s the only one who can take out the NDP in Hamilton,” he says, adding that, last year, he apologized to the Liberal icon for the dust-up, when he ran into her at an Ottawa Red Lobster. Copps, he said, has declined the Liberal invite. In 2006, the NDP took all three urban Hamilton ridings.