FRESH FACES: There’ll be a lot of new faces around the table when the legislative assembly meets to pick a government in the December. In 2011, there were 14 holdovers from the previous assembly; this time there will be eight. Only one incumbent was defeated in 2011, while eight went down on Monday night. As with the last assembly, there’s an unacceptably small number of woman, with two of 19 being elected in 2011 and 2015.

The Yellowknife Ridings: low turnout, shocking upsets and a shift to the left

by Mark Rendell

After an evening of nailbitingly close races, Yellowknife woke up Tuesday morning with a slightly more leftward lilt. Of the city’s five new MLAs, three are solidly from the progressive side of the political spectrum, while the two other new faces could be best described as liberals.

Kevin O’Reilly, an environmental activist, Caroline Cochrane, the CEO of a women’s shelter and Julie Green, a former CBC reporter, all ran on social and environmental justice and platforms. Any concern among Yellowknife’s progressive partisans that they might be left voiceless with the departure of Bob Bromley and Wendy Bisaro can be put to rest.

In Yellowknife North, voters opted for centrist Cory Vanthuyne over his left-wing opponents Dan Wong and Ben Nind. But Vanthuyne, who had a reputation for fiscal conservatism while a city councillor, is nonetheless a proponent of downtown revitalization and environmental stewardship.

It was always going to be a close race between Wong and Vanthuyne, who both left their city council seats to seek higher office. But ultimately Vanthuyne’s victory was something of a surprise. Wong ran a slick, creative campaign both online and on the ground, but it seems likely that the 14 votes by which he lost were Old Town progressive votes sapped away from him by Ben Nind, Bob Bromleys’ former constituency assistant.

In Yellowknife Centre, veteran pol Robert Hawkins’ loss by a 90-vote margin put an end to the three-election success of his campaign machine, despite its intense use of social media and solid get-out-the-vote groundwork. Hawkins’ campaign had been the subject of controversy in the final weeks, but in the end, it appears YK Centre voters, like many across the territory, were simply in the mood for change. At least that’s what Green chalked it up to, when speaking to the CBC: “In the end, people want change and that’s what I felt they got.”

In a night full of tight races and surprise upsets, the biggest Yellowknife shocker was probably in Kam Lake, where ITI and Justice minister Dave Ramsay fell to 30-year-old Kieron Testart by roughly 80 votes. The win seems to be the result of lacklustre campaigning on Ramsay’s part and smart tactics by Testart.

Testart’s initial federal run for the Liberal Party, and then shift to seeking territorial office, whether intentional or not, worked well. It gave him many months of additional media coverage and turned him from a complete unknown outside Liberal circles into a Yellowknife household name. His efforts to cost out his platform also likely appealed to business-minded Kam Lakers. Ultimately, though, it seems like voter turnout, the worst in the territory at only 25 percent, scuttled Ramsay. Testart was able to convince enough people to buy into his change-based platform and hit the polls, while Ramsay’s supporters, who had handed him overwhelming victories the last two elections, simply stayed home.

Daryl Dolynny’s loss by only 10 votes in Range Lake suggests a hard-fought battle that swung in Cochrane’s favour primarily due to a desire for change. Both candidates ran solid, slip-up free campaigns – but Cochrane, with both business experience and social justice credentials, may simply have appealed to a wider constituency. With such a slim victory margin, though, it would be a mistake to read too much into this.

The two YK incumbents who won, former premier Bob McLeod and former health and social services minister Glen Abernethy, were returned with solid leads of several hundred votes each. Newcomer Chris Clarke did little to dent Abernethy’s campaign. But Nigit’stil Norbert, the 30-year-old Indigenous woman who lit up debates with passionate arguments and pointed criticism of the status quo, did surprisingly well against one of the toughest opponents in the territory, garnering 179 votes in a riding that’s not particularly progressive. I doubt very much it’s the last time we’ll be hearing her name.

Still, despite the excitement of a night full of surprises, our democracy in Yellowknife was looking pretty frail. On average, across all seven ridings, only about 32 percent of eligible voters went to the polls. Even the highest number, 44 percent in Yellowknife North, isn’t something to brag about. Perhaps it was voter fatigue after a marathon election season, but Yellowknife’s numbers were noticeably lower than the rest of the territory’s. Something to give us pause.