Tuesday October 22, 2019 ~ COWICHAN-MALAHAT-LANGFORD
by Mary P Brooke ~ West Shore Voice News
The garlic hasn’t been planted yet and there’s a bit of real estate business to catch up on, but the full-on commitment to his Liberal campaign in the federal riding of Cowichan-Malahat-Langford was purposefully all-consuming for Blair Herbert, for good reason.
For the farm owner and Realtor, it was all about making sure that the Conservatives didn’t win in the riding, Blair Herbert said today in an interview with West Shore Voice News. ” We got caught in the squeeze here,” said Herbert. Some voters told him the last four or five days before the October 21 general election that they switched their vote intentions from Liberal to NDP (whose candidate Alistair MacGregor was seen to have a very good chance of winning) as a way to make sure the Conservatives did not succeed in Cowichan-Malahat-Langford in 2019.
For those voters it seemed to be a fearful last-minute decision “because Andrew Scheer hyped up the rhetoric in the last part of the campaign and that put people off — they wanted to make sure Scheer didn’t get in”, said Herbert.
“But it was a good positive campaign. We were happy with the campaign we put on. We spent time today taking down signs, and talking about what to do four years from now,” said the candidate whose 10,125 vote tally put him in fourth place in the Cowichan-Malahat-Langford race.
Cowichan-Malahat-Langford was won with strength by NDP incumbent Alistair MacGregor (23,095 votes) who now returns to Ottawa for a second term in what will be the 43rd Parliament. Second place went to Conservative candidate Alana DeLong (16,456 votes), and third place to Green candidate Lydia Hwitsum (12,880 votes).
Herbert says the Greens “poured a lot of money” into their campaigns on the island, but that the financial investment didn’t seem to do enough to win them more seats. The Greens held onto the two seats on Vancouver Island that they had before heading into this election (Elizabeth May in Saanich-Gulf Islands and Paul Manly in Nanaimo-Ladysmith), as well as picking up a new seat in New Brunswick.
“For me this campaign was a very positive experience, and although the results were somewhat disappointing we’re still happy with the way it turned out federally,” said Herbert today. “It was important to keep the Conservatives out of power, so I guess we won from that perspective.”
Blair Herbert was among several of the Liberal candidates running on Vancouver Island who attended a Trudeau rally on Sunday evening October 20 in Victoria where the Liberal leader said: “We can’t just create economic growth through cutting. If you have economic growth without giving opportunities for everyone to succeed it doesn’t count for anything. We’re just getting started.”
Now the plan going forward in Cowichan-Malahat-Langford is about how to get the Liberal electoral district association more active. “There are a lot of Liberals in this area. We have to tap into that,” said Blair Herbert.
====== Election Night Results (October 21, 2019) | Cowichan-Malahat-Langford:
There were 242 polls in the Cowichan-Malahat-Langford riding for this election. Voter turnout on October 21 (including Advance Poll numbers) was 63,802 of 92,637 (68.87%) which does not include electors who registered on election day. The population of Cowichan-Malahat-Langford is 108,052 (2016 census).
- ELECTED: Alistair MacGregor, NDP incumbent (23,095 votes | 32.6%)
- Second place: Alana DeLong, Conservative (16,456 votes | 25.8%)
- Third place: Lydia Hwitsum, Green (12,880 votes | 20.2%)
- Fourth place: Blair Herbert, Liberal (10,125 votes | 15.9%)
- Fifth place: Rhonda Chen, People’s Party (1,050 votes | 1.6%)
- Sixth place: Robin Morton Stanbridge, Christian Heritage (196 votes | 0.3%)