Ontario Tory candidate Tony Genco the latest political turncoat

Tony Genco is the newly minted Ontario Tory candidate in the riding of Vaughan.

Genco is a former Liberal staffer at Queen's Park, who left the party when it did not want him to run in the May 2 federal election.

So, instead, Genco ran against star Conservative candidate Julian Fantino in a federal byelection and lost by fewer than a thousand votes.

As you might expect, Genco's defection has garnered negative reaction in various blogs. One writer even dubbed Genco as "Phony Tony" and created a 'tribute' page for him.

If it's for the right reason, the public can forgive a turncoat.

In 1990, for example, Alberta MP, David Kilgour was ejected from the Mulroney Conservatives for voting against the GST, and subsequently served as a Liberal MP until 2005.

In Genco's defence, he has a lot of company.

The most illustrious turncoat, of course, is interim Liberal leader Bob Rae, who was a New Democrat MP in Ottawa from 1978 to 1982 and then went on to become the NDP Premier of Ontario.

Other recent turncoat includes Liberal David Emerson, who, in 2006, crossed the floor to the Conservatives on the very day the new Harper government was sworn in.

In 2005, Belinda Stronach left the Tories, and reportedly on the same day, her boyfriend MP Peter McKay, to join Paul Martin's Liberal cabinet.

In 2004, former B.C. NDP Premier Ujjal Dosanjh ran for the Paul Martin Liberals, was elected and subsequently served as the country's health minister.

At the time, Bill Tielman, an NDP pundit from B.C., wrote a revealing piece about why the public doesn't look kindly on political turncoats.

"For me and lots of others, this is a personal as well as a political betrayal," he wrote.

"My experience working for and believing in Dosanjh can be mirrored in the efforts of thousands of others, from his NDP cabinet and caucus colleagues to supporters who knocked on doors for (Dosanjh) . . . What we don't respect is the opportunism that comes when people switch parties just before an election."