Nater holds Perth-Wellington as Liberals win majority

This riding remained true Tory blue even as a wave of Liberal red flowed across the country.

Conservative John Nater received 22,255 votes, 43 per cent of the total, to win the riding seat in the Oct. 19 federal election. Liberal Stephen McCotter finished second with 19,420 votes (37%). In third place was NDP candidate Ethan Rabidoux, who picked up 15% of the vote, with a total of 7,756.

The Green Party’s Nicole Ramsdale garnered 3% of the vote, with 1,347 ballots cast in her favour. Irma DeVries of the Christian Heritage Party received 794 votes (2%), while independent candidate Roger Fuhr garnered less than 1%, with 217 votes.

Nationally, the Justin Trudeau-led Liberals won a majority government with 184 seats, while incumbent Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative party dropped to official opposition status with 99 seats.

The NDP lost official opposition status, winning only 44 seats on Monday night. The separatist Bloc Quebecois increased its seat count from four to 10, all in Quebec.

Green Party leader Elizabeth May won her party’s only seat once again.

“It’s certainly a disappointment, the national results, but as I like to say, the people are never wrong,” Nater told the Advertiser on Oct. 20.

“The electorate have made a decision to elect a majority liberal government and it’s certainly a decision we respect and I look forward to being a collaborative and constructive opposition member going forward.”

The new MP attributed his campaign success to hard work at the grassroots level and said he felt confident going into election day.

“You never want to take anything for granted but we knocked on over 30,000 doors and we felt we had good support at the doorstep,” said Nater.

“We felt good about the campaign we ran and I think the results reflected the hard work we put into it.

“We were in communities where they haven’t had someone campaigning on behalf of a politician in generations.”

Nater said he felt there was no single issue that decided the campaign either locally or nationally.

“I think it was a variety of different issues,” he said.

“Things like rural infrastructure, rural transportation options, support for health care, support for communities, those are things we heard about time and time again at the doorsteps and a big issue [was] support for families.”

With the election over, Nater said he was planning to pen a letter to the Prime Minister-elect “outlining the key issues for the people here in Perth-Wellington.”

Nater also said he plans to get offices up and running, both in the riding and in the nation’s capital, as quickly as possible.

“We’ll be focusing on being a strong voice for Perth-Wellington in Ottawa,” he said.

While noting, “It’s always disappointing when you don’t win,” Rabidoux told the Advertiser, “I couldn’t be more proud of the campaign we did run.”

The NDP candidate said locally the party tripled its amount of lawn signs, money raised and number of volunteers, and he pointed out leader Tom Mulcair visited the riding four times in support of the local effort.

“We’ve got a lot to be proud of and so I’ve got absolutely no bitterness and no regret this morning,” said Rabidoux.

Nationally he suggested, “there was overwhelming anti-Harper sentiment out there and it coalesced around the Liberals.”

Rabidoux stated, “That sentiment was not as extreme locally, because John won very  handily - it was a very solid victory - but it was still there. Strategic voting definitely hurt us locally, too.”

McCotter, did not respond to requests from the Advertiser  for an interview prior to deadline.

Locally, voter turnout was reported at just over 68%, with a total of 51,789 casting ballots out of the 76,0987 Perth-Wellington voters registered prior to election day.

Nater becomes the second federal MP to represent the riding, which has been held by Conservative Gary Schellenberger since it was created in 2004 from parts of Perth-Middlesex, Waterloo-Wellington and Dufferin-Peel-Wellington-Grey.

The riding includes all of Perth County, plus the Wellington County municipalities of Mapleton, Minto and Wellington North.