The battle for the Thunder Bay – Atikokan riding began as a back-and-forth affair, but ended with Liberal candidate Bill Mauro successfully grabbing a third term.
The race for the riding was tight just after the polls closed at 9 p.m. Mauro traded the lead several times with his NDP counterpart, Mary Kozorys. The see-saw battle eventually ended and Mauro continued to hold onto a lead of nearly 400 votes as more polling stations continued to report their numbers.
By the end of the night Mauro won with 10,326 votes, beating the NDP hopeful by 452 ballots.
Mauro said he was satisfied with the results but wished the numbers were closer to 2003 where he received nearly 18,000 votes.
“A win is a win,” Mauro said. “Clearly we got more work to do. We’re pleased with the results but not so pleased that we don’t have a majority. That’s going to be an interesting dynamic. We have done so much good for this riding and yet there are still obviously a lot of people who aren’t satisfied with what we’re doing or they have an idea of something that perhaps I have to do differently.”
The Liberal incumbent played it cautious, waiting until the final polls were reported before making a victory speech to supporters at the Knights of Columbus hall on May Street. He continued to play it safe even though several media outlets, including tbnewswatch.com, had declared him the winner of the riding nearly an hour before.
After his victory speech, Mauro said he was heading into uncharted territory with a minority government. But the three-time Liberal MPP was adamant that he would continue to work hard for the riding.
“I’m not going to be a boy scout anymore,” he said. “We’ve been watching some of the stuff that’s been going on from one particular party and I’m just not going to let it happen anymore. When I see nonsense we’re going to hit back.”
While the election results failed to provide Kozorys with a seat at Queen’s Park, it did provide the NDP candidate with strong motivation to run again in the next provincial election.
“I just wanted to thank those voters who have shown their support tonight and I’m not going to stop the work I’ve been doing on a constituency level and also in the community,” she said after her concession speech at a Chicago Joe’s room packed with orange support.
Despite the loss, Kozorys said the campaign has been about giving a voice to people who feel they haven’t been represented.
And the numbers show how hard her campaign team worked and also highlighted their weaknesses.
“I had the good fortune to be out there canvassing for about five-and-a-half months,” she said. “You learn there are areas you need to re-enter over and over again and we do poll-by-poll analysis and believe me, I’ll be out there again soon. “
With nearly 5,300 votes, Gilbert said he would have liked to have finished a little stronger. But the PC candidate said he was comfortable with the campaign he ran.
“I was looking for perhaps an opportunity to be able to give something back to the community that’s been pretty special to me,” he said at his campaign office Thursday night.
Talking to people the past few months, Gilbert has learned there are many people struggling in the riding.
“Whether it’s because they’ve lost a job, lost a pension. People are losing their homes because they can’t afford the taxes,” he said.
“There are just so many issues – some of them are minor, some of them major. It’s important that government deal with that. I felt our platform would have addressed a number of these if you took it at face value and I did.”
“I was looking at the chance of perhaps doing something for those people,” he added.
