Ron Davies still casts a shadow over his old seat

Ron Davies will no longer hold his election victory parties in the back room of the Aneurin Labour Club. For the first time since 1983, when he won his Westminster seat, he will not be part of the Caerphilly political scene.

"As a politician, the man was brilliant," said Kevin Carter, 42, a baker, nursing his drink at the bar. "Had it not been for the Clapham Common nonsense, then he would be running the Welsh Assembly, and it would be better than it is today."

The Assembly seat is, remarkably, under threat from Plaid Cymru. For the Westminster seat at the 2001 general election, Wayne David held the seat for Labour with a 14,000 majority. Then, as now, the Plaid Cymru challenger was Lindsay Whittle, the head of the county borough council, where nationalists outnumber Labour councillors. And in the first Assembly election in 1999, the year after his Clapham Common "moment of madness", Mr Davies came within 3,000 votes of defeat.

Although Mr Carter, a long-time Labour voter, will not vote on 1 May ("the Welsh Assembly is a load of codswallop"), he tipped Plaid to edge it.

Across town, in the Courthouse pub by Caerphilly Castle, there was some agreement. Barbara Yeo, a retired shopkeeper aged 50, said that Mr Whittle's credentials at the council would be decisive.

Nadine Davey, 21, a student, will vote as she did at the general election, for Plaid. She said: "I'm not anti-English but I think Wales should have independence. And I like Lindsay Whittle." In an election in which personality may be a factor, the Labour candidate, Jeff Cuthbert, shrugged off the Ron Davies factor. (Mr Davies announced last month he would be quitting politics.) He said: "The general opinion was what's done is done and we're moving forward."

CAERPHILLY: Laura Jones (C); Jeffrey Cuthbert (Lab); Rob Roffe (Lib Dem); Lindsay Whittle (PC); Avril Daffyd-Lewis (Ind); Anne Blackman (Ind); Brenda Vipass (UKIP).