The race for eighth
Cori Ramsay finished eighth in the city council election on Saturday, earning 5,693 votes or 43.2 per cent of the votes cast. She was the only elected councillor to receive support from less than half of the voters. Frank Everitt was next at 50.7 per cent while Brian Skakun led the way at 71.9 per cent. That means that nearly three out of every four voters filled in the oval next to Skakun’s name.
The real story, however, is Ramsay. She defeated two local businessmen – Dave Fuller and Cameron Stolz – with much higher community profiles than her by nearly 700 votes. Fuller finished ninth with 5,001 votes, while Stolz was right behind with 4,971 votes. Fuller’s Business Coach column returns to The Citizen on Friday, with his analysis of the business lessons he learned from his defeat. One of them was underestimating his competition, which speaks directly to Ramsay’s victory.
She tied Stolz and both of them were five votes behind Fuller after the first advance voting day at the Civic Centre on Oct. 10. She finished third (215) to Fuller (218) and Stolz (236) at the second advance voting day at Pine Centre, as well as the special voting day on Oct. 12 at University Hospital of Northern B.C.
What a difference a week makes.
On advance voting day on Oct. 16 at the Civic Centre, Ramsay beat Fuller by 40 votes and Stolz by nearly 50 votes. The following day at UNBC, she crushed both of them, beating Fuller by exactly 100 votes and Stolz by nearly 160.
With that wind in her sails, she defeated both men at six of the nine polling stations on Saturday and ended up in a virtual three-way tie at Edgewood school, which gave 257 votes to both Fuller and Ramsay, while backing Stolz with 248 votes.
Ramsay’s huge wins were at D.P. Todd, Ecole Lac Des Bois and Ron Brent. At Lac Des Bois, Ramsay’s 544 votes were nearly 200 more than Stolz’s 353.
As a result, her third place finishes among the three at Blackburn (Stolz 82, Fuller 76, Ramsay 69) and Vanway (Fuller 302, Stolz 280, Ramsay 257) weren’t nearly enough to overcome her significant lead.
From a geographical standpoint, Ramsay’s support was strongest in the Bowl and declined in the outlying areas. She beat Fuller handily at Kelly Road in the Hart (731 to 633) but Stolz was just seven votes back at 724. At Malaspina in College Heights, her margin of victory was 42 votes over Stolz and 54 over Fuller.
The only Bowl location that didn’t give a large margin of victory was at John Mcinnis, where she beat Fuller and Stolz by 31 and 30 votes respectively.
But in an election that saw 13,184 ballots cast, with just 24 per cent of the total number of eligible voters participating, the candidates who motivated their supporters to take time out from a sunny and warm fall day to vote at one of nine local schools.
The other three quarters exercised their democratic right not to vote Saturday but that doesn’t mean they didn’t care at all. It just means they didn’t care enough to step inside a polling station to cast a ballot on a beautiful Saturday in October.
Over the next four years, none of this matters, of course. Ramsay has a seat at the table and Fuller and Stolz don’t. More significantly, despite finishing with nearly 3,800 fewer votes than Skakun, Ramsay’s vote at the council table will have the exact same weight as his. What she does with that vote will be up to her.
Making it right
Tuesday’s editorial stated that the senior management team at the City of Prince George increased from seven to nine individuals between 2015 and 2018. An alert reader pointed out that the city’s management team is now actually 10, with the promotion of Adam Homes, the city engineer, to a director level position in the engineering and public works department.
— Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout
With that wind in her sails, she defeated both men at six of the nine polling stations on Saturday and ended up in a virtual three-way tie at Edgewood school...