Lloydminster (Saskatchewan) by election on November 13

By John Cairns
Staff Reporter

November 13 has been set as the date for the provincial byelection in Lloydminster.

 The byelection was called Thursday by Premier Brad Wall. In a news release Wall stated he wanted to see a new member elected in time so the new MLA could participate in the fall sitting of the legislature.

 The seat became vacant this fall with the resignation of MLA Tim McMillan. It will be the first electoral test for all the parties since the provincial election was held in the fall of 2011.

There are five officially nominated candidates in this by-election:

• Luke Bonsan, Green Party
• Wayne Byers, New Democratic Party (N.D.P.)
• Randall Edge, P.C. Party of Saskatchewan
• Darrin Lamoureux, Saskatchewan Liberal Party
• Colleen Young, Saskatchewan Party

Luke Bonsan

http://www.meridianbooster.com/2014/10/21/green-party-candidate-enters-race

Wayne Byers

Wayne is active in the community as a member of the Lloydminster Lions Club, the Lloydminster Flying Club, and the Saskatchewan Horse Federation. He has lived in the Lloydminster area for 22 years, the past 18 years in the R. M. of Wilton, with his wife Cheryl. They have two adult children.

Wayne worked for SaskTel for 30 years and served on its Board of Directors for 3 years. He is the past Director of Kerrobert Credit Union and is currently licensed with the Insurance Council of Saskatchewan. He is also a commercial pilot. He is a member of the Lloydminster Co-op and the Lloydminster Credit Union.

http://www.meridianbooster.com/2014/10/21/wayne-byers-named-ndp-candidate-2

Randall Edge

The Lloydminster Meridian Booster • Monday, November 3, 2014 5 PC finds candidate for by-election JAMES WOOD Staff Writer The Progressive Conservative Party of Saskatchewan has found their candidate, and his name is Randall Edge. Edge is a management consultant based out of Regina, and has long been engaged in politics. Involved with the conservative movement since running in a 1997 election in Kamloops, Edge has been serving as a financial agent for the riding of Wascana for nearly a decade. Edge wants to run in the by-election to give people a diverse range of choices on the ballot. “The reason I am running as a candidate is that to be frank, the government in its wisdom chose to call this by-election in very short order,” said Edge. “It is extremely important to me that voters have a choice. In light of the fact that such a short period of time had been given to prepare for the by-election, I offered to put my name forward on behalf of the PC Party in Saskatchewan so that th ...

Darrin Lamoureux

The Saskatchewan Liberal Party has appointed a new Interim Leader, Darrin Lamoureux. Lamoureux takes over the leadership role from Greg Gallagher, who has served as the party's Interim Leader since March 2012.

Lamoureux, 46, currently resides in Regina with his wife, Linda, and has two grown children. Born in Winnipeg, Lamoureux spent most of his childhood since 5 years old in Regina and Moose Jaw before returning to Winnipeg to attend the University of Manitoba. In 1991 at the age of 24 he started his own construction company in Vancouver. Following the arrival of his daughter in 1995 he moved his family and business to Winnipeg. He moved back home to Regina in 2011 and is currently contracted as a Project Manager, overseeing construction and renovation of automotive dealerships in Western Canada.

In addition to his entrepreneurial and business background, Lamoureux is also no stranger to politics. He is a long-time supporter of the Liberal Party and his brother Kevin, who was elected as a Member of Parliament for Winnipeg North in 2010, and previously served as a Manitoba Liberal MLA.

Colleen Young

http://www.meridianbooster.com/2014/10/19/colleen-young-wins-nomination-...

2011 results

Saskatchewan Tim McMillan 2,797 66.42%

New Democratic Wayne Byers 1,225 29.09%

Green Meggan Hougham 189 4.49%

Total4,211

So, do you predict that Liberal candidate and the party leader will come in second?

Actually, the NDP won it narrowly in 1995

Saskatchewan general election, 1995:

Lloydminster electoral district

 NDP Violet Stanger 2,592 43.72%   

Prog. Conservative Steven Turnbull 2,326 39.24%    

Liberal Donald C. Young 1,010 17.04%

and came very close in 2003 with the same candidate who is running for them this time.

Saskatchewan general election, 2003:

Lloydminster electoral district

Saskatchewan Milt Wakefield 1,986 49.60%

New Democratic Wayne Byers 1,920 47.95%

Liberal Richard Sparks98 2.45%

2003 was a different time. The NDP managed a successful come-from-behind campaign while the Saskatchewan Party completely flamed out, so as the governing party there was an incentive to vote NDP so your community might get some big government bucks. Since then the Saskatchewan NDP has fallen off a cliff (a remarkable feat in a province with so few, if any, cliffs) and they haven't figured out how to even get back to 1982 levels of support.

Mentioning 2003 is hair splitting. It will be a Sask Party blow-out. The relative rankings of the non-Sask Party candidates is irrelevant.

You have to give Brad Wall some credit, because he is a very shrewd political operator, and is prepared to break ranks with his federal counterparts. 2 examples I can think of are Wall joined the call for an inquiry into missing and murdered Aboriginal women, and for the abolition of the Senate.

I'd love to hear more from our Saskatchewan contingent on what's going on in Saskatchewan, but I think a big problem there (and in BC) is that marginal parties are generally squeezed out. When a party is in second place, sometimes they tend to coast and think that if they wait long enough, the public will vote them back in. The number of seats is irrelevant, it's the placement of the parties. This is why I think the BC NDP still has problems despite being reduced to 2 seats in 2011, and why the Saskatchewan NDP has problems now (I mean, go to their website, you have to dig quite a bit to find info on their by-election candidate, unlike the Sask Party which has clear information on the front page). If there was a third party that could knock the NDP out of second place, that would help. The careerists who expect power to fall to them without any effort won't stick around in a party that's in third place, and this gives room for the up-and-comers in the party to rebuild. It's what allowed the Manitoba NDP to recover from its defeat in 1988, it's what allowed the Ontario NDP to recover from its defeat in 1995, and I hope it will also help the Nova Scotia NDP recover from its defeat in 2013.

With 30 of 45 polls reporting, its shaping up to be a Sask. Party blow-out. The count is currently 73% to 19%, which is an even worse result than the 2011 election. I assumed the NDP would do better than they did last election, but of knew they would not come close to winning. Perhaps the low by-election turn-out (about half as many people as in the general election) hurt the NDP, as people who vote for them are less likely to come out. I'm also surprised the 3 minor parties did so poorly, with neither the Liberals, Greens, or PCs breaking 3%.

With 42 polls the Cons now lead 63 to 30%, not as bad for the NDP as the early returns and a very slight improvement over the last election.

As I said, Broten needs to resign.  Now.

And the smaller parties should feel even worse...none of them managed to even get close to a hundred votes.

This will be my last post on this thread:

It's not just about "one kick at the can".  It's about three years of no progress in the polls at all.  If the SNDP ends up with even FEWER seats after the next election(something we'd all have to concede is a real possiiblity)isn't that pretty much the end of any hope for them?

They've been at least thirty-five to forty points down the whole time.  That means there's no chance of any improvement under this leader at all between now and the next election.  The party of Tommy Douglas deserves better than that.

Broten is part of the old Romanow "it's enough that we aren't cutting quite as deeply" generation of Sask Dippers...and that generation is the one that has led the party to its current near-death situation.   Why "stay the course" when the course is due iceberg?

The only chance the Sask. NDP has to, essentially, avoid extinction in the next election(any fewer than nine seats will have to be considered essentially extinction)is to get rid of this guy,  have  the energy of a leadership race, and get some sort of fresh face in the job...someone who has nothing at all to do with the Romanow generation.

I just don't want to see Canadian social democracy die in its birthplace is all.

http://www.meridianbooster.com/2014/11/14/colleen-young-takes-the-win-in...

Wasn't there some Liberal MLA there who murdered his wife, or had his wife murdered, who was related to, maybe the son or nephew of the Liberal Premier?

What was his name?

And did he kill her, or did he have some one do his dirty work for him?

By the time the NDP was created Ross Thatcher had long since become a right-wing politican. Alos he was never a CCF MLA. He was a CCF MP for 5 years before jumping ship to the Liberals. He then returned to provinical politics as a Sask Liberal (at the time the right-wing opposition to the CCF and far to the right of Pearson's federal Libs) and served as a Liberal MLA and the last Liberal Premier of Saskatchewan.

Gosh, even on a provincial Saskatchewan thread, you are trying to portray Liberals in the worst way possible - dragging up some weird, bizarre crime from years ago.

Gosh,Debater, even on a provincial Saskatchewan thread, you are trying to portray Liberals in the best way possible -even claiming that "most NDPers still support Ralph."