NDP’s Gretzky promises to fight feared Ford cuts
Veteran MPP cruises to re-election victory with 52 per cent of votes cast
With a convincing NDP win in Windsor West that bucked the provincial trend, MPP Lisa Gretzky vowed Thursday night to fight the cuts she’s expecting to come from the new PC government led by Doug Ford.
“I think we’re going to have a long road ahead of us and a lot of work, but I certainly am up to the challenge and my colleagues are too,” Gretzky said shortly after arriving, along with re-elected Windsor-Tecumseh MPP Percy Hatfield at the Royal Canadian Legion hall in Riverside.
Gretzky, who won by only 1,000 votes when she was first elected in 2014, won this time with about 52 per cent of the vote, about 9,000 more votes than PC candidate Adam Ibrahim, who came second with about 29 per cent. Liberal candidate and downtown city Coun. Rino Bortolin managed to win about 15 per cent of the vote, coming a distant third.
It was a disappointing loss that Bortolin saw coming when he saw the vote collapsing provincewide for the Liberals two weeks earlier. “I think it was just too much to overcome,” he said Thursday night. “It was the sentiment for change.”
While Ibrahim may not have won Windsor West, the mood was jubilant at his PC campaign office. “I couldn’t be prouder,” Ibrahim said, noting that PC votes for Windsor West doubled compared to 2014. “That just shows there is an appetite for change here in Windsor West, and that people are excited.” Ibrahim said he’ll continue to advocate for the PC party, and for Windsor, although he held off on committing to another run at MPP four years from now. “It’s been a year-and-a-half
of campaigning. We knocked on thousands of doors, we’ve talked to thousands of people. It’s such a beautiful experience to come together at the end and see the results . ... It’s been really humbling and touching.”
When asked how Windsorites will have a voice in Queen’s Park when its MPPs are not part of government, Gretzky noted that the NDP will now be the official Opposition, “so our voice will be amplified.” She said in Windsor, everybody rallies together to fight for a cause. “And when you have the people of Windsor behind you, fighting against a government that’s making cuts to services, that goes a long way,” she said. “It takes a lot of work, it takes really pushing back, being vocal on behalf of everybody,” she said. “We’re just going to keep working hard as we have been and when we see something that’s going to adversely affect our region we’re going to fight back against that.”
Green candidate Krysta Glovasky-Ridsdale received about 3.6 per cent of the vote, while Chad Durocher from the None of the Above Direct Democracy Party received just over one per cent. Gretzky, accompanied by her husband Tyler, told supporters she had hoped to get through her victory speech without crying but couldn’t hold back the tears when speaking about her mother-in-law Marilyn Gretzky, who died last week. “She would have been here with us celebrating, telling me to knock off the crying, to let Percy (Hatfield) get to his speech. “She would be just thrilled to see you all here tonight, celebrating with us.”