(Halifax, Nova Scotia) After winning four federal elections, Liberal incumbent Scott Brison says the vandals who spray-painted the word “fag” on several of his lawn signs near his rural Nova Scotia home were probably just cowards frustrated by his winning streak.

“Some of these folks have been trying to beat me for a few elections now. They’ve figured out that’s going to be hard to do, so they’re finding another way to try to make a point.”

Brison, who has represented the riding of Kings-Hants for 11 years, was one of three candidates in Nova Scotia who complained about vandalism Monday.

A Conservative candidate and his Liberal rival in the riding of Halifax both reported that windows in their campaign offices were smashed by hooligans throwing rocks.

Liberal candidate Catherine Meade said she found several large stones lying in her office amidst shattered glass.

She noted that her office was the only one on the street that was damaged.

Meade drew a blank when asked who would do such a thing.

“No, I have no idea what would go through someone’s mind who would do this,” she said outside the office after examining three baseball-size holes in the storefront windows.

“I have no idea what the motive would be.”

About two kilometres to the north, the campaign office of Conservative Ted Larsen lost three plate-glass windows and a smaller entryway window _ total damage: $4,500.

Campaign manager Jordi Morgan said the building was also sprayed with red Xs and various anti-Tory insults, most of them including crude, four-letter words.

Morgan said he visited Meade’s office later in the day and concluded the rock throwers in that case were probably the same ones who attacked Larsen’s office.

“It looked like the rocks came from the same place,” he said. “Is there a connection? I can’t prove that there is one. One would tend to think that the two cases are related.”

The riding had been held by former New Democratic Party leader Alexa McDonough since 1997. She announced her retirement from politics in June.

Morgan scoffed at the idea that the vandalism could be linked to the fact that Halifax is a hotly contested riding.
“I don’t think that you can take any sort of legitimate political analysis from some yahoo who has thrown a rock through a window,” he said. “It seems kind of silly.”

In Cheverie, N.S., the rural community were Brison lives, the outspoken former Progressive Conservative said his constituents were appalled by the vandalism in their riding.

He said some of them took it upon themselves to scrape the pink spray paint off the signs in front of their homes.
“It’s not just an attack on me, it’s an attack on our values as Canadians,” Brison said.

“This is someone who doesn’t have the guts to express to me directly how they feel. It’s some coward who runs around in the middle of the night defacing people’s property.”

Brison married his partner, Maxime St. Pierre, in the summer of 2007. It was the first gay wedding of a member of Parliament.

The MP said a few of his lawn signs were vandalized in 1997, but he insisted the more recent handiwork was more sinister and troubling.

Brison suggested that the spate of vandalism in Nova Scotia and several more serious cases in Ontario indicate the Liberal party is being targeted.

Over the weekend, the owners of at least 30 Toronto homes in two different ridings found their cars had been dangerously tampered with and their houses had been vandalized.

All of them had Liberal lawn signs on their property.

Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett, the Grit candidate for St. Paul’s, noted that Liberal supporters reported similar incidents in Guelph, Ont., in late August and in the Toronto riding of Willowdale in March prior to scheduled byelections.