After a long 78-day election period, what has turned out to be a roller-coaster of a campaign is drawing to a close in Battlefords-Lloydminster as Federal Election 2015 is decided Monday, Oct. 19.
Advance polls have already been open, but those who intend to vote on Election Day itself can do so at their designated polling station between 7:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. when the polls close.
The election campaign in the constituency has proved newsworthy, at times for all the wrong reasons.
For a while, the opposition parties were having serious trouble finding and keeping their candidates. Two of the four parties in the riding saw their original nominees withdraw from the race.
The Liberals seemed to have recruited a star candidate in North Battleford city councillor Ray Fox. He was nominated in January at their meeting in Cut Knife, but Fox withdrew this summer after inadvertently posting a photo of a woman with a black eye on his personal Facebook page.
Fox turned out to be just one of a long line of candidates all over Canada felled by the so-called “bozo eruption,” incidences where candidates made controversial comments on social media or elsewhere that ultimately came back to haunt them.
During the first week of the election campaign, sheet metal contractor Larry Ingram was confirmed as the candidate for the Liberals, and he later opened a campaign office in his hometown of Turtleford.
The New Democrats ran into unexpected difficulties. The early election call by Prime Minister Stephen Harper Aug. 2 took place before the NDP even had a candidate officially in place.
Two weeks later on Aug. 16 in North Battleford, the party nominated former Red Pheasant band councillor Sandra Arias to run.
But by late September, Arias had pulled out of the race, with financial difficulties from the long campaign cited as the reason.
She was replaced by Meota-area farmer Glenn Tait, who had been the NDP candidate in 2011.
His campaign again focused heavily on agriculture issues including the Wheat Board’s demise. But his latest run was bogged down by his late entry, as well as his harvest activities happening at the same time.
Opposition forces were further divided with the entry of Doug Anguish, former Romanow government cabinet minister and a former MP, into the race as an independent with a campaign focused on greater democratic accountability. He officially announced his entry during the same week Arias was withdrawing.
Like Tait, Anguish also had a late start, entering just four weeks before election day.
With Green candidate Mikaela Tenkink also on the ballot, four candidates were competing to be the main opponent to Conservative Gerry Ritz, whose nomination had been in place since the previous year.
The Ritz campaign saw the incumbent appear at various local all-candidates meetings as well as a noon luncheon last Thursday in North Battleford.
As agriculture minister, Ritz was also involved in the “secondary tour” for the Conservatives across Canada. Ritz faced opposition ag critics at the federal agriculture leaders’ debate in Ottawa, and was also involved in the run-up to the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal struck during the campaign period.
Most political observers expect Ritz to prevail in Battlefords-Lloydminster. The site www.electionprediction.org currently predicts Battlefords-Lloydminster is again going Conservative.
But a larger question, and one increasingly in doubt, is whether Ritz will still be agriculture minister after Oct. 19, as several national polls put the Liberals under Justin Trudeau in front with a week to go.
Whether the promising Liberal poll numbers will translate to real results on election night appears likely to be the big story of the election and the one that is most likely to impact the riding directly.
The News-Optimist is planning up-to-the-minute coverage on election night with local and regional returns, and we will have a full story about the election in next Thursday’s edition of the Regional Optimist.
