Belinda Karahalios defeats cabinet minister
PC candidate who won nomination by 13 votes wins seat from Liberals
The Tory wave painted Cambridge blue on Thursday night, making 36-year-old Belinda Karahalios the new riding MPP.
“We did it!” were her first words at the podium as she addressed Progressive Conservative supporters at the Argyle Arms in Preston just after 10 o’clock. “There is hope on the horizon.”
Karahalios had worked as a volunteer in other campaigns before.
But this was the Preston resident’s first foray into politics with her own name on the marquee, placed there as an 11th-hour candidate to win the local party nomination back in April.
“That part is still surreal, seeing my name everywhere,” Karahalios said on Thursday before the polls closed for voting. “The energy is still the same. The hard work is still the same.”
The work included defeating incumbent Liberal Kathryn McGarry, a cabinet minister and experienced politician. Karahalios, the wife of conservative activist Jim Karahalios, got the job done.
Win or lose, that first political race can be a startling experience.
“There are some things, I guess, you can’t learn until you are in it,” said Marjorie Knight, who was seeking office for the first time as the New Democrat candidate who trailed Karahalios as the polls came in.
“It’s amazing, the contact you make. It brings you into people’s homes. It brings you on their radar.”
Knight, who turns 55 in a week, works as a social outreach worker in the Galt area of Cambridge for the House of Friendship.
McGarry lost twice to the Tories in her first two campaigns. Then, in 2014, she won the seat by 3,069 votes over Tory incumbent Rob Leone to become the first Liberal in 71 years to hold the provincial seat representing what is now Cambridge. That term now looks like a Liberal blip.
The riding seemed certain to go back to the Tories as results rolled in. The Tories had held the seat for nearly two decades before McGarry took over.
For McGarry, this campaign was different than her previous three.
“This one’s been different because I have been the incumbent,” said McGarry on Wednesday as the longtime critical care nurse prepared for the final hours of campaigning on her record as an MPP for the first time.
“So I find that, at the doors, I’m very recognizable. People know me from many different aspects. I’ve either been at their organization introducing or giving an award or meeting former patients at the door.”
As the campaign wound down, and Kathleen Wynne publicly conceded her Liberals would not form the next government, McGarry still had not surrendered in her fourth provincial campaign.
“It is feeling a little different this time,” the 61-year-old North Dumfries resident and mother of four said on Wednesday. “I lost the first two. I won the last one. This one doesn’t feel like a losing campaign to me. I’ve got quite a groundswell in the community. People know me at the door.”
Karahalios has lived in Preston for 3 ½ years. She has worked for the Kidney Foundation of Canada, advocating on behalf of patients. She also lists experience in medical education and medical communications. Her son Victor is two.
In April, the Mississauga-born Karahalios won the local party nomination by 13 votes with a come-frombehind victory as a last-minute entrant. The Cambridge contest had been rocked by repeated delays and the threat of a parachuted-in candidate from out of province. Karahalios had little time to prepare for her first campaign as a candidate, although she had volunteered on several political campaigns in the past.
“I jumped right from the nomination to the campaign,” Karahalios said on Thursday afternoon. “In a short four weeks, we’ve knocked on over 30,000 doors. We’ve had hundreds of volunteers.”
The Montreal-born Knight, a mother of grown twin daughters who was once homeless, says her first taste of a political race was eye-opening.
“Some of it is like, wow. I knew it would be, but it’s like on steroids,” Knight said. “You watch late-night TV and they talk about people reading mean tweets. You chuckle and go, ‘People really do stuff like that?’ And then when you start getting them — Wow, people are really like that.”
The reshaped Cambridge riding has 115,460 residents, according to the 2016 census. It no longer includes Hespeler. Instead, a northern sliver of Brant County has been added. It still includes North Dumfries Township.