Tory newcomer keeps riding blue
As federal election strongholds go, York-Simcoe has been as Tory blue as the lake it straddles — and that didn’t change as the riding elected newcomer Scot Davidson Monday night. The Conservatives have owned this vast riding along Lake Simcoe — which includes Georgina, East Gwillimbury, King, Bradford West Gwillimbury and the Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation — dating back five elections.
It’s a political juggernaut that, for the past 14 years, has featured Conservative MP Peter Van Loan, a Tory stalwart who triggered Monday’s byelection with his retirement announcement last September.
The Tory bid to fill Van Loan’s shoes against a slate of eight contenders from all major federal parties rested with Davidson, a Georgina businessman and political newcomer.
Elections Canada showed the Conservative newcomer capturing more than 50 per cent of the vote, with roughly 77 per cent of polls reporting late Monday night.
The married father has lived in the riding his entire life, serving on the Georgina Medical Health Board, the Georgina Waterways Advisory Committee, and the Lake Simcoe Fisheries Stakeholder Committee, according to his bio.
His wife, Suzanne, is a member of Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation, which makes him “keenly aware of their major issues and challenges,” it reads.
The strongest threat to Tory dominance was expected from second-time Liberal candidate Shaun Tanaka, an articulate University of Toronto and Queen’s University geography professor and mother of twin sons who declares in a video on her website: “I know in my heart that this is a Liberal riding.”
Tanaka trailed in second on Monday night, followed by NDP candidate Jessa McLean, but by a wide gap.
The byelection in York-Simcoe is historic in this way: It marks the first-ever candidate running for Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada.