It's finally over..Next up the Provincial Election

What an exciting election this was in our riding. Here are the final results:

Conservative, Kellie Leitch received a whopping 31,784 votes taking 49.4% of the vote

NDP, Katy Austin came in an impressive second with 11,185 votes taking 17.4% of the vote

Former Conservative, Helena Guergis was third with 8,714 votes taking 13.5% of the vote.

Liberal, Alex Smardenka was forth with 8,207 votes taking 12.7% of the votes.

Green, Jace Metheral was fifth with 3,482 votes taking 5.4% of the votes.

CHP, Peter Vander Zaag was sixth with 757 votes taking 1.2% of the votes.

CAP, Gord Cochrane was last with 244 votes taking .2% of the votes.

During the 36 days of the campaign for the ones who were either involved with one of the campaigns, or attended one of the town hall meetings it was an experience. We had candidates being booed at, we had campaigns placing signs blocking other candidate signs, we had a letter that was sent out with information concerning Dr. Leitch in her endorsement war with Mayor and Warden, Cal Patterson on the bottom of the letter, and on the top it talked about Dr. Leitch's involvement with some medical group.

It's quite clear that this letter must have been done by one of the campaigns to discredit Dr. Leitch. A word of advice to whoever sent the letter. If you are going to spend over $ 10,000 to discredit another candidate, you might want to pick a topic that could have had an impact on the other candidates campaign.

Candidates who were impressive at the Town Hall meetings were Guergis and Metheral. Candidates who did a good job were Leitch, Vander Zaag, and Cochrane, and candidates who need some work were Smardenka and Austin.

The biggest upset was by Katy Austin who rode the Orange Crush machine that was sweeping most of Canada. I like Katy, but she was not that good during this campaign, yet she came in second beating out both Guergis and Smardenka. On the topic of Guergis, buy talk about the decline of a political dynasty. Her cousins and sister were defeated in the municipal elections and last but not least was Helena. I for one would not feel sorry for our former MP. As a defeated MP she is set to receive about $ 78,000, and once she hits 55 she'll get an annual pension of about $ 40,000 a year. Word on the street is that she plans to write a book about her experiences, and I for one can't wait for the movie version as I hate reading books.

Next up is Alex Smardenka. I like Alex and his wife Sandy who I met and became friends with during the municipal election last year. They have done alot for the communities of Wasaga Beach and Collingwood by donating their time and money to several worth while causes. Well they might not be my friend after what I have to say about how Alex's campaign went. The success of any campaign is based on the team you have in place and the leader of that team. I met once Alex's campaign manager and I was not impressed. I even offered to help out during the campaign, left my contact information and never heard back from them, so I never helped out. Maybe they did not want me to help out because I left the Federal Liberals to work with the Green Party because I could not follow a leader like Dion, but because of my friendship with the Smardenka's I offered my help.

Anyway so much for the history lesson. A campaign manager's job is to get the troops out in full force to help the candidate get elected. Dr. Leitch's team was successful in doing this because they had a strong base of supporters who helped during the Guergis campaigns in the past, and they also help Wilson's campaign at the Provincial level. She used students who needed community service hours, retired seniors, and whoever wanted to help.

Alex was not the best public speaker, and his campaign team should have prepared him better for the public speaking events. This falls to the campaign manager to deal with, and he did a really crappy job, and if they paid him I would ask for a refund. The campaign website was not up until 2 weeks after the campaign started, they failed to use social media the way other campaigns did. They had little support from the central party. This was the worst showing of any Liberal candidate in the brief history of the Simcoe Grey riding, and that also had to do with what happend at the Federal level.

Now over to Jace Metheral from the Green Party. I never met this kid, and yes he's a kid as he's only 22 years old, but he was a great public speaker, and seemed really down to earth. I expected him to get at least 8% of the vote and my Green Party friends expected him to get about 13% of the vote. I was shocked to see him only get 5% of the vote, but he did beat the national average for the Greens which was 3% I think. On the Federal side as a whole they lost over 500,000 votes compared to the 2008 election. While Elizabeth May was finally elected, the Federal Green Party put all of their resources into May's riding and neglected the rest of their candidates across Canada. If I was Jace I would stay very active in politics as this kid does have a future.

As for Gord and Peter, well between them they got about 1.5% of the vote so what can I say.....

So with a couple of months off to relax from this election thing, we will be heading into what will be another exciting election in Simcoe Grey at the Provincial level.

Until next time!