Lone Liberal credits local focus for election victory

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This article was published 04/10/2023 (745 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Amidst the celebrations and resignations of election night, Cindy Lamoureux took on a unique title: Manitoba’s last Liberal standing.

Despite the Manitoba Liberal Party’s disastrous evening that saw its defeated leader resign and included the ouster of a former MP who had held his riding for 24 years, Lamoureux didn’t just hang on by a thread: with a 49 per cent voter turnout in Tyndall Park, she received 4,014 votes — more than double the total of the second-place candidate, New Democrat Kelly Legaspi.

Despite her own victory, Lamoureux called it a “bittersweet” feeling to lose former MLA John Gerrard and leader Dougald Lamont.

“Really, I want to pay that respect in the sense that they’re going to be deeply missed. And I’m a bit nervous, what it’s going to be like in those chambers moving forward. It can be very difficult, even being part of a small party sometimes,” she said Wednesday.

“But I also know that I plan to be very focused on holding this new government accountable. They made a lot of promises throughout this campaign, and I’m excited to get to work with that.”

Lamoureux said she’s in no hurry to take up the leadership role left vacant by Lamont. As of now, the Manitoba Liberal Party does not have an interim leader; that appointment will have to be decided by the party.

“It’s not something that I have been thinking about; I was purely focused on getting re-elected in Tyndall Park. Instead, I’m going to take my time,” she said.

“I want to make some smart decisions over the next few months. I’ll be considering all the options.”

The Lamoureux family has been an influential part of Canada’s liberal constituencies. The re-elected MLA’s father, Kevin Lamoureux, was part of the Manitoba Liberal Party’s resurgence in the 1988 election, and remained aligned with the Liberals even after that period of relevance faded.

He moved on to federal politics, and currently serves as the MP for Winnipeg North. The senior Lamoureux’s brother, Darrin, was formerly the leader of the Saskatchewan Progress Party, the province’s liberal political party (which is not associated with the federal Liberal Party).

Cindy Lamoureux pointed to consistent, year-round check-ins with constituents as a possible reasoning for her lasting success.

“I go out of my way as much as possible to attend events, to be with my constituents to go to little parties,” she said. “I know I go to, for example, a lot of baptisms and birthday parties. And I think at the end of the day, it’s really important for politicians to be able to connect with their constituents.”

Veteran political analyst and adjunct professor in political studies at the University of Manitoba Christopher Adams agreed. He called the Lamoureux family an “anomaly” in a riding that would otherwise seem to swing NDP.

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“Many people thought that if the Liberals went down to one seat on election night, it would be John Gerrard who would be the one who held on to things, and so they’ve really bucked the trend,” he said. “If anybody in Canada wants to study how to win elections and hold on to elections, I think (the Lamoureuxes) would be able to write the rulebook on how to do things on the local level.”

It’s not out of the ordinary for Manitoba’s Liberals to survive on a single seat. When Gerrard was elected in 1999, he held the party’s only seat before being joined by Kevin Lamoureux in 2003. Adams said it’s unlikely that any Liberal MPs will throw their hat in the provincial ring, especially considering the uphill battle the new leader will face. But it’s not out of the question for a party outsider to come in and take the helm.

“So here we are in 2023, Dougald Lamont, as leader of the party, quite articulate, willing to go to all the debates, fairly capable as a debater, all those things, but it was just the wrong time for the Liberals,” he said.

“A fairly unpopular Progressive Conservative government that had its struggles over the past couple of years, and an NDP willing to serve as the the major challenger to that. So the Liberals in this election got very badly squeezed out between the two big parties.”

Meanwhile, Lamont seems to be taking the defeat in stride. After his resignation, he posted a simple graphic on social media saying thank you and good night. His profile bio on Instagram is currently a casual, one-word acknowledgement of defeat: “Whatevs.”

Malak Abas
Reporter

Malak Abas is a city reporter at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg’s North End, she led the campus paper at the University of Manitoba before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Malak.

Every piece of reporting Malak produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.