Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com

PARRY SOUND-MUSKOKA — In a tighter-than-expected race, local candidates are scrambling in the final days to push them over the top Thursday.

With some surprising curve balls centred squarely on the election’s defining issue of the Muskoka hospitals redevelopment.

The 2,200 vote gap in June 2022 between PC Graydon Smith and the Greens’ Matt Richter is being widely watched with neither party divulging internal polling.

And politics of the hour are shaping out along previous party lines and issues of the day.

Mayors in the Conservative Parry Sound half of the riding — including former Liberal candidate Jamie McGarvey — and in north Burk’s Falls are rallying around Smith.

Along with Huntsville’s Tory online news site the Doppler.

In the centre of the riding he has the surprise backing of Dr. Rohit Gupta, of Bracebridge, the surgeon who led the hospital fight against MAHC — along with Dr. Liang Liao an influential physician in south Muskoka who wasn’t a signatory to the physicians’ letter that inspired those trying to save South Muskoka Memorial Hospital’s fate.

This morning in what the Greens had touted as a major medical endorsement, Dr. Tina Kapos, chair of the board of the Cottage Country Family Health Team and lead physician for the Cottage Country Health Network, and her colleague Shannon Lees an early spokesperson for opposing physicians, voiced their support for Richter.

The announcement, moved at the last minute to his Huntsville office, was said by the Greens yesterday to oddly have been scheduled for MAHC’s Huntsville hospital site.

It was rumoured that some Huntsville doctors would have attended.

Vote notes:

• Meanwhile, in the waning hours Greens have been hitting the streets in front of their campaign offices waving signs at passing drivers.
• And while Elections Ontario voting cards finally began arriving late in the mail after the weekend showing locations for voters to cast ballots, both parties have been peppering those mail boxes with 5×7 campaign literature. The Greens posted two of them from Leader Mike Schreiner.
• The NDP and non-existent Liberals have been all but forgotten, which will make it interesting to see how many Muskokans and Parry Sounders cast votes for them and against the leading parties thus splitting the vote.

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