More updates on Nina's campaign

From the Vancouver Sun

The riding votes small-c conservative, said Grewal's campaign manager Dane Minor, but this time it's definitely a three-way race with crime and transportation infrastructure being the main local issues. He said the campaign has become personal, with other candidates attacking Grewal as being reliant on her husband. "She is her own woman and always has been," he said.

NDP candidate Barry Bell, is making his second try for the federal seat. In 2004 Bell didn't even have a campaign office yet garnered 28 per cent of the vote. Now, said campaign manager Jeff Davis, Bell is better known. He said Grewal is carrying "baggage" from the controversy surrounding Gurmant Grewal's discussions with Liberals over having the couple defect from the Tories. Bell said that when he knocks on the door of Conservatives, they often tell him they are voting for Stephen Harper, not Nina Grewal.

Liberal Brenda Locke, a former cabinet minister in the B.C. Liberal government, agreed that transportation -- the riding is on the south side of the Fraser River at the crowded Port Mann Bridge -- and crime are the two main issues. Locke said she is being aided by former Cadman supporters, loyal to her from her days as a provincial MLA, when her constituency overlapped Cadman's federal riding. She is facing a tough fight. Locke was turfed from her provincial seat earlier this year when voters in her constituency swung back to the NDP.

And from the Vancouver Sun, a story about Nina Grewal's independent competitors DVD campaign 'flyer':

Surrey candidate's campaign pitch goes straight to DVD Jonathan Fowlie, Vancouver sun

Jack Cook is a self-declared man of firsts.

As the long-time Surrey resident tells it, he imported Canada's first personal computer and was the one who introduced the Segway scooter to Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Canada.

Now an independent candidate in Fleetwood-Port Kells, the 53-year-old Cook says he has pioneered yet another first -- his own personal campaign DVD.

Starting last week, Cook began mass mailing his 10-minute video pitch to all 37,902 residences in the riding, in hopes it would help raise his profile before Monday's federal election.

"We had to design a campaign with the understanding that the local media wouldn't take me seriously, because they never take independents seriously," Cook said Wednesday in an interview, adding he believes a personal campaign DVD has never been done before in Canada.

He said the DVD, his website, and election signs with a sketched self portrait were all intended to get attention he was unlikely to get in the local press.

In that DVD, Cook stands in front of a plain white background and speaks directly into the camera to let viewers know why he should get their vote.

"Do you want a representative who has nothing to say in the House of Commons, rarely ventures into the riding, refuses to meet with constituents and return their phone calls," he asks, standing beside a cardboard cutout of Conservative incumbent Nina Grewal.

Later in the DVD, Cook promises to consult constituents on all pieces of legislation and to meet with anyone in the riding who ever has an issue to raise.

Of course, the DVD is not entirely about platform. Viewers who watch to the end will also learn that Cook can speak Japanese, French, Spanish and Thai. They will know he has donated more than 100 units of blood in four countries. And those who watch the "extra" section will hear about his journey down the River Kwai, his travels to the 1972 U.S.S.R. hockey summit and how he once traded a calculator for a parka.

On Wednesday, Cook said producing the discs and sending them across the riding cost him about $55,000, which he says has been money well spent.

"I've managed to get through the front door and [people] are not offended," he said. "The only thing they have to do is decide whether to make popcorn and watch it or not."