precedence, behind Harper and House Leader Rob Nicholson, by virtue of his appointment to the Privy Council in 2004. Emerson had given no public indication that he was thinking of leaving the Liberal Party during the election campaign, Wong's remarks notwithstanding. As a Cabinet minister he had been featured prominently in Liberal TV ads in British Columbia promoting that party as the best choice for voters. He launched several blistering attacks against Harper and the Conservatives during the campaign, including one assertion that under a Harper government, "the strong [would] survive and the weak die". On election night, he told supporters that he wanted to be "Stephen Harper's worst nightmare." In an interview with CTV after being sworn in, he clarified to reporters about the heated partisan rhetoric used during the campaign. Emerson told CTV that he runs his riding office on a nonpartisan basis, and that his first priority was the interests of the people of Vancouver Kingsway. Controversy Part of the Emerson controversy stems from Vancouver Kingsway's voting history. The riding has long been one of the more left-leaning ones in Vancouver; most election battles take place between the Liberals and NDP. Vancouver Kingsway previously existed from 1953 to 1988 and elected a Progressive Conservative candidate only once, during the 1958 Tory landslide. It has not elected a Conservative or any member of its predecessor parties—the PCs, the Reform Party of Canada or the Canadian Alliance—since its recreation in 1997. The Conservative candidate in 2006, Wong, finished a distant third with only 8,700 votes—12,000 votes behind Emerson and 7,000 behind Waddell—and 19% of the total vote. In the 2004 election, the Conservative candidate, Jesse Johl, finished with 16.5% of the vote. Both totals were far less than the combined PC/Canadian Alliance vote of 34.4% in 2000. The NDP's vote share of less than 16% in that 2000 election jumped to more than 37% when Emerson first ran in 2004. Liberal MP and former Minister of Health, Ujjal Dosanjh noted that a poll held prior to the election showed less than 20 per cent of residents in the riding knew Emerson by name, lending credence to the assertions that the Liberal banner played a large part in his election and re-election. Liberal National President Mike Eizenga said that Emerson knew "if he was running in that riding as a Conservative, he wouldn't have a chance" and has demanded his