Voters in the riding
of Mount Pearl North head to the polls today to elect a new member of
the Newfoundland and Labrador House of Assembly. The riding has only
been vacant since October 11, when its MHA, Steve Kent resigned to
become the Chief Administrative Officer of the City of Mount Pearl.
Kent was a member of the Progressive Conservative Party, and had been
Deputy Prime Minister of the province under the Premiership of Kathy
Dunderdale from 2014 to 2015. He was also mayor of Mount Pearl from
2003 to 2007, prior to being elected to the House. Mount Pearl North
will be the first by-election held in the province since the Liberals
swept into power in 2015, when they won a landslide majority
government, capturing 31 of province's 40 seats. Mount Pearl North
was one of only seven seats the Tories had won in the election.
Profile
Mount Pearl North is
a suburban riding that covers the northern half of the City of Mount
Pearl, the second largest city in the province, and the third largest
municipality (after St. John's and the Town of Conception Bay
South), located west of St. John's. The riding also covers two small
subdivisions in St. John's itself: Brookfield Plains and Edison,
which are made up of newly-built homes. The riding is shaped like an
upside-down “U”, surrounding the central part of Mount Pearl. It
covers the older part of the city in the east (mostly built before
1980), and newer subdivisions in the west and north which were mainly
built in the 1980s, and since the 1990s respectively. The riding is
more wealthy than the rest of of the province, with the average
income being in the mid-$30,000 range (compared to $27,000 for the
province) and is overwhelmingly White, with most residents being of
English or Irish descent.
MHAs since 1956
The riding is
generally a safe Tory seat; it has elected Progressive Conservatives
continuously since 1971 except for a by-election in 1988 which
elected Liberal Eric Gullage and the subsequent provincial election
in 1989 when he was re-elected (though, at the time the riding, then
known as “Waterford-Kenmount” also covered what is now the riding
of St. John's West). Gullage lost the seat in 1993 to Harvey Hodder,
making the riding only one of 16 ridings to elect a Tory MHA that
election. Hodder was re-elected in the new riding of Waterford Valley
in 1996, a riding with similar borders to today's Mount Pearl North.
The riding was one of only nine Tory seats won in 1996, with Hodder
winning the seat by a nine-point margin. Hodder continued to
represent the seat until Kent's election in 2007, winning increased
majorities in 1999 (13 points) and 2003 (53 points!). Kent's first
election win was a huge win, thanks to the coattails of the very
popular Premier Danny Williams, winning the seat by a whopping 76
point margin over his Liberal opponent. He was re-elected in 2011 by
a 54 point margin over the NDP candidate, and faced stiffer
competition in 2015 against Mount Pearl mayor (Kent's successor)
Randy Simms, whom he beat by nine points.
In the 2015
election, Kent won most of the polls on election day, but Simms won a
scattering of polls across the riding. Kent's best neighbourhood was
the new Brookfield Plains subdivision, where he won 59% of the
election day vote. Simms only won one neighbourhood, that of Masonic
Park which covers a nursing home which has since been shut down.
Results by neighbourhood from the 2015 federal and provincial elections
In
the federal election, the Tories were a non-factor, as the race was
between incumbent NDP Member of Parliament Ryan Cleary and his
Liberal opponent, Seamus O'Regan in the greater riding of St. John's
South—Mount Pearl. O'Regan defeated Cleary, and easily won the
election day polls corresponding to Mount Pearl North 60% to 35%.
O'Regan won all but two polls in the area, with his best
neighbourhood being Masonic Park (67%) and his worst neighbouhood
being the Old part of the city, where he still won 55% of the vote
(to Cleary's 41%).
Outlook
The front-runner in this race has to be the Tory candidate, Jim
Lester, a farmer who owns and operates “Lester's Farm”, which is
located on the southeastern border of the riding. He was the Tory
candidate in the neighbouring Mount Pearl Southlands seat in the 2015
election, which he lost narrowly. The Liberal candidate in the
by-election is St. John's businessman Jim Burton, who had previously
sought the federal Liberal nomination in St. John's South—Mount
Pearl, but withdrew in favour of O'Regan. The NDP candidate is Nicole
Kieley, who is the executive director for the Newfoundland and
Labrador Sexual Assault Crisis and Prevention Centre. There is a
fourth candidate, businessman Hudson Stratton who is running as an
independent.
Since winning the 2015 election, the popularity of the governing
Liberals took a huge hit in 2016 after the government introduced a
number of austerity measures, including the closing of most of the
province's libraries. However, Liberal Party support has rebounded,
but it is not back to where it was at the time of the last election.
Both the Tories and the NDP have benefited from the Liberal's
unpopularity, but Tory support is now back to where it was at the
election, and the NDP, which currently has no leader is not fairing
that much better. Needless to say though, I do not expect the Tories
to lose this ordinarily safe-Tory seat.
Polls close at 8:00pm local time, which is 6:30 Eastern Time.
