It was a packed house seeing red — and white — that welcomed a Liberal premier to Georgina Thursday night for the first time in recent memory.

Mayor Margaret Quirk said Premier Kathleen Wynne’s visit to Boston Pizza in Keswick to help Liberal candidate Shaun Tanaka officially kick off her federal election bid for the York-Simcoe seat was the first time a premier had visited Georgina in Quirk’s nearly 20 years on council as far as she could recall.

Quirk invited her back to see the beauty in Pefferlaw and Sutton.

And that may just happen, with rumours of an early campaign in advance of the election day currently scheduled for Oct. 19.

Georgina may also be considered fertile political ground for planting some Liberal election seeds, despite the fact it has been a Conservative stronghold both provincially and federally for the past two decades.

Just ask provincial Liberal candidate and school board trustee Loralea Carruthers also in attendance Thursday night, who, last year, nearly unseated 20-year Progressive Conservative incumbent Julia Munro.

Tanaka kicked off her election campaign at a rally attended by a capacity, standing-room-only crowd with some pretty heavy party players in tow. In addition to Wynne and Carruthers, MPPs Helena Jaczek and Ann Hoggarth joined the celebration.

Tanaka quoted Wynne, arguing, “if Stephen Harper won’t lead the way, he should get out of the way”.

Tanaka spoke of “undoing a decade of neglect, of a refusal to lead” by the Harper Conservatives, with a new Liberal government that would work with the province and local municipalities, to grow the local economy, fund quality health care, invest in transportation infrastructure and transit, promote local tourism, support the agricultural sector, deliver affordable seniors’ housing, and fight climate change.

“Harper has the unique, unprecedented record of being the only prime minister in Canadian history to have two recessions under his leadership — the first one in 2008, but this one is his,” she said.