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Parachute candidate

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A parachute candidate, or carpetbagger in the United States, is a pejorative term[1] for an election candidate who does not live in the area they are running to represent and has little connection to it. The allegation is thus that a desperate political party lacking reliable talent local to the district or region is "parachuting" the candidate in for the job or that the party (or the candidate themselves) wishes to give a candidate an easier election than would happen in their home area. The term also carries the implication that the candidacy has been imposed without regard to the existing local hierarchy.[2]

Australia

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Australian Labor Party

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Due to its factions (Labor Left, Labor Right, and Independent Labor), Labor often has arrangements in place for preselections, which would often result in parachuting candidates.[citation needed]


Coalition

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Canada

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Federal

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Provincial

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Municipal

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France

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France has a long history of parachute candidates.[38] Extreme examples have been candidates from mainland France who ran for election in overseas France. In 1963, Michel Debré was parachuted to the Indian Ocean island of Réunion nearly 6,000 miles away from the mainland,[39] where he won a by-election and served as deputy for seventeen years.[40] In the small North American territory of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, three candidates from the mainland have attempted to win its constituency seat since 2002, most recently Patricia Chagnon in 2024.[41]

Ireland

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New Zealand

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In 2017, Deborah Russell won selection for the safe Labour seat of New Lynn, in West Auckland, despite being from Whangamōmona, a small town in the Manawatū-Whanganui region. She beat out Greg Presland, a New Lynn resident for 30 years who had the backing of the local members. However, Labour's Council backed Russell because of her finance expertise and a pledge to have more women in electorates. Upon winning selection, Russell moved to the electorate.[52][53] She was elected in the 2017 election and re-elected in 2020 before being defeated in the electorate in 2023.

Taiwan

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Han Kuo-yu was a successful parachute candidate for Mayor of Kaohsiung at 2018 Taiwanese local elections.[54][55] He has served previously on the Taipei County Council[56] and as a member of Legislative Yuan elected by Taipei County.[57]

United Kingdom

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Parachute candidates are common in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Westminster system historically emphasizes party discipline over responsiveness to constituencies. For example, Margaret Thatcher, who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for over eleven years, represented Finchley during her parliamentary career despite living in Chelsea, London.[58] As far back as the 1900s, the then-dominant Liberal Party were parachuting candidates from England into safe seats in Scotland, including Winston Churchill, elected MP for Dundee in 1908. This led to a formal protest movement, called Young Scots, arguing that objections to carpet-baggers were based on a lack of understanding of the political will of their constituents on matters like Home Rule.[59]

A 2013 YouGov survey found that support for a hypothetical candidate rose by 12 points after voters learned that his opponent had moved to the area two years earlier and by 30 points if the opponent lived 120 miles away.[60] The percentage of local MPs rose, according to Michael Rush of the University of Exeter, from 25% in 1979 to 45% in 1997; Ralph Scott of Demos calculates that as of 2014 63% are local.[58] According to surveys, public trust in all MPs has decreased, but trust in the local MP has increased, making pre-existing connections to seats more critical. Election advertisements emphasize local connections more than they mention the candidate's party or its leader. Such a change produces MPs who are more attentive to local issues, but may be detrimental to Britain's first-past-the-post voting system designed to create broad parties that party whips stabilize.[58]

Labour Party

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  • Luciana Berger was a middle-class Londoner parachuted into the north-western working-class safe Labour seat of Liverpool Wavertree. She was heavily criticised for having no connection to the Wavertree constituency or Liverpool when she first ran in 2010. When a local radio station asked her basic questions about the culture of Liverpool, she could not answer them and, during the selection process, she stayed at the house of retiring local MP Jane Kennedy rather than resettle in the area. Some figures in the media suggested that she was only selected for the seat because of her close connections to the family of former Prime Minister Tony Blair.[61] Berger won the seat in 2010 with a slightly larger majority than Kennedy had in 2005, against the national trend, then retained it in 2015 and 2017. After joining the Liberal Democrats in 2019, she unsuccessfully contested the Greater London seat of Finchley and Golders Green at the 2019 general election. She chose to stand there because of the seat's large Jewish population and Remain vote, as well as her affinity towards living in London and choice to raise her children there rather than in Liverpool.[62][63]
  • Roy Jenkins was so unfamiliar with Glasgow, he later wrote, that on his arrival to campaign at the 1982 Glasgow Hillhead by-election its skyline was "as mysterious to me as the minarets of Constantinople" to Russian troops during the Russo-Turkish War.[58] Campaigning as a Social Democrat, Jenkins won the election, taking the seat from the Scottish Conservatives.[64]
  • David and Ed Miliband were selected to fight safe Labour seats in northern England, South Shields and Doncaster North respectively, despite being Oxford graduates who were born, raised, and living in London while working as political advisers. David was elected for the first time in 2001, and Ed in 2005. Both would later serve as ministers under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and fight against each other in the 2010 party leadership election.
  • Shaun Woodward, who was first elected as a Conservative MP in 1997, defected to the Labour Party in 1999. He faced much criticism from former Conservative colleagues, particularly when he refused to resign and fight a by-election.[65][66] In 2001, Woodward did not contest his safe Conservative seat of Witney in Oxfordshire, instead being selected for the similarly ultra-safe Labour seat of St Helens South in Merseyside. During the early days of the 2001 general election campaign, Labour minister Chris Mullin wrote in his diary on 11 May about "speculation about which members of the New Labour elite will be parachuted into one of the safe seats being vacated by MPs retiring at the last moment." On 14 May, Mullin described Woodward's selection at St Helens as "one of New Labour's vilest stitch-ups" and wrote that listening to him campaigning as a Labour candidate "made my flesh creep."[67]

Conservative Party

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  • Prior to the 2024 general election, Richard Holden, who was serving as the Chairman of the Conservative Party, represented the marginal seat of North West Durham, which he won in the 2019 general election with a slender 2.4% majority. His seat was abolished by the 2023 Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies and he was later selected for the safe Conservative seat of Basildon and Billericay after the Conservative Party imposed him as the candidate against local opposition; Holden was the only contender allowed to stand on the shortlist.[68] This led to accusations of carpetbagging, especially after it emerged that, in January 2024, he described himself as "bloody loyal to the north-east", and denied he would seek a safer seat.[69] Ironically, Holden went on to win by a mere twenty votes.[70]
  • Boris Johnson's selection for the ultra-safe Conservative seat of Henley in 2001, after the party's central office parachuted him in,[71] was described by senior local Tory Mike McInnes as "a disaster for the integrity of modern politics" and "arrogant in the extreme", Johnson having "blustered in with no knowledge about the constituency". McInnes commented that he could not see him supporting a hypothetical local old lady who was having problems with her housing benefit and asked, "Are people going to feel comfortable going to him?" Likewise, Johnson's main rival, Liberal Democrat candidate Catherine Bearder, gave him a withering assessment. She said: "In Henley, you can put a blue rosette on a donkey and it will get elected. And that's what happened in 2001... He clearly just wanted to be an MP. As soon as London came up, he was off out."[71]

Minor parties

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United States

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U.S. Senate

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U.S. House of Representatives

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See also

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References

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