When the winds of political change gusted through Manitoba in years past, there always seemed to be wind barriers put up around Flin Flon constituency.
Not so much this time. While the NDP has again won this riding, prolonging a nearly 50-year record of triumph, the question of whether Flin Flon is a safe orange seat is an open one.
Just 132 votes separated the victorious New Democrat Tom Lindsey from Progressive Conservative Angela Enright. And in an even more surprising development, Lindsey finished just 163 votes ahead of Liberal Leslie Beck.
Give Lindsey and his team credit for overcoming a near-perfect storm of impediments: a diminished party brand, a despised leader, a possible vote split on the Left and a PC Party that actually put resources into its northern campaign this time.
Lindsey isn’t downplaying the challenges he will face as an opposition MLA. But he may have an easier time than he thinks simply because the PC government will likely pay attention to Flin Flon knowing that it is now a competitive seat.
Or is it? Many New Democrats believe the 355 votes that went to independent candidate (and former NDP MLA) Clarence Pettersen would have largely gone to Lindsey had Pettersen stayed off the ballot.
Surely Pettersen won’t run again, they contend, so the NDP’s margin of victory stands to rise in future elections.
It’s difficult to gauge the accuracy of that sentiment. All I know is that the Pettersen voters (or potential voters) I spoke with weren’t that crazy about the NDP, especially with Greg Selinger in charge.
We could also speculate about traditional NDP votes shifting to the Liberal column, as Beck, the former Flin Flon city councillor, ran that party’s most spirited local campaign in generations.
Unfortunately for Beck, the Liberals could not convince voters they would finally emerge from the political wilderness. For her to come as close as she did while representing a borderline fringe party speaks well of the campaign she ran.
Enright’s PC campaign must be incredibly disappointed, wondering if one more night of door-knocking here or a few more trips to outlying communities there might have tipped the scales.
But as massive as the Tories’ “blue wave” across Manitoba was, in Flin Flon constituency the party only earned 151 more votes than it did in 2011. Enright came close to victory only because the NDP vote fell by 810 tallies.
That said, the rabid anger toward Greg Selinger’s NDP government was palpable in Flin Flon. It wasn’t so much that Selinger hiked the PST by one point as it was this idea that when it comes to the rising cost of living, the provincial government had become part of the problem instead of the solution.
Now Manitobans are left with Premier Brian Pallister, who is no doubt hoping to replicate the success of Saskatchewan’s Brad Wall with policies that are both right-leaning and populist.
Eventually an NDP premier will replace Pallister, and that person will shift the government to the left. This cycle will continue, probably for eternity, because prevailing public opinion on how government should operate will never be static.
And Flin Flon is not exempt from such shifts. No riding is.
Local Angle is published on Fridays.
