George Palaganas Donnelly wins in close race
City rides Orange Crush wave
By Theresa McManus, The Record May 4, 2011 •Story•Photos ( 1 )
Orange Crush: Fin Donnelly sports his “magic shoes” that were a gift from a campaign volunteer.Photograph by: Larry Wright, THE RECORDDifferent election - same result.

New Westminster-Coquitlam voters have once again elected NDP candidate Fin Donnelly to serve as their member of Parliament in Ottawa. As was the case in the November 2009 byelection, Donnelly received more votes that Conservative candidate Diana Dilworth, Liberal party candidate Ken Lee and Green candidate Rebecca Helps.

"It was a close race, but I think obviously the people are happy with my record," he said about his reelection.

Preliminary results indicate that Donnelly received about 2,217 more votes than Dilworth.

Trailing far behind were Lee, Helps and Marxist-Leninist Party candidate Roland Verrier.

"I'm still shocked we lost," said Dilworth.

Donnelly is excited about returning to Ottawa and taking on a more senior role in the NDP caucus.

The Conservatives will form a majority government, after getting 167 seats in the House of Commons.

Having won 102 seats, the NDP will form the Official Opposition.

"We'll do our best to keep them honest," Donnelly said.

While she conceded that "losing sucks", Dilworth told supporters she was pleased that the Conservatives had won a majority government.

Dilworth told supporters that there's always another opportunity to win in the next election.

Over at the Donnelly's election party, many New Democrats were delighted their party would be the official Opposition, but disappointed that the Conservatives would form a majority government.

"We, unfortunately, now have a majority Harper government," Donnelly said. "We have a strong group of New Democrats to fight that. ...That is exactly what we will be doing."

The local Liberal candidate said he knew his party wasn't doing well in the campaign but admitted the results were worse than he'd imagined. The Liberals won a record-low 34 seats in the House of Commons.

"It was quite shocking to me," Lee said. "Many people are so disappointed, devastated. We knew early on it was going to be really bad with what was happening in Quebec and Ontario."

Lee believes Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff should have taken action earlier to address the Conservative attack ads that targeted his character.

"I think the Conservative strategy, the framing of Michael Ignatieff as a certain person, worked. It's too bad," he said. "A lot of people say that when you keep hearing the same thing over and over, it becomes the truth. ... I think our party should have done something when he was being attacked. Michael wanted to take the high road."

Like himself, Lee said Ignatieff isn't a career politician and may have underestimated the damage done by the ads. He said Ignatieff had "no choice" but to step down as Liberal leader after losing his own seat.

Lee hopes the Liberal Party will be able to reflect and rebuild because he feels it's needed to prevent the political polarization that exists in the United States.

"We need somebody in the middle," he said. "I hope this will be a good lesson to rebuild."

Lee is worried about the potential impacts of having a Conservative majority government in Ottawa.

"Virtually, they can do whatever," he said. "There will be no checks and balances."

Jim Sinclair, president of the B.C. Federation of Labour and a resident of New Westminster-Coquitlam, attended Donnelly's election party. He's also concerned that Stephen Harper will be able to push through an agenda that will include tax cuts to corporation and cuts to programs and downloading to provinces.

"I think we are going to have to fight very hard in the next four years to keep our country," he said.

Sinclair said Harper's political ideology is celebrated by the Fraser Institute - not most working Canadians.

Although he topped the polls, Donnelly said he still has work to do in New Westminster.

"We didn't get all our votes out in New Westminster," he said. "We have room for improvement in New Westminster."

In the last federal election, held in October 2008, NDP candidate Dawn Black beat Conservative Yonah Martin by less than 1,500 votes. Black resigned and went on be elected as New Westminster's MLA and Martin was appointed to the Senate.

In the November 2009 byelection, Donnelly received 12,171 votes, followed by Dilworth with 8,730 votes, Lee with 2,528 votes and Helps with 1,047 votes - all who ran in this year's general election.

© Copyright (c) New West Record

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May 5, 2011 at 8:12am · Like
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