Four weeks after the writ dropped and six weeks after he began campaigning, NDP candidate Eric Redhead won a decisive victory in the Thompson byelection June 7, capturing 70 per cent of the votes cast to win the right to represent the riding in the Manitoba legislature until the next general election.
Redhead’s victory came almost six months to the day after the tragedy that made it necessary, former Thompson MLA Danielle Adams’s death in a highway crash in December, just a couple of years into her first term.
Redhead, a former chief of Shamattawa First Nation, received 1,469 of 2,070 votes cast in the byelection, outcounting Progressive Conservative candidate Charlotte Larocque by nearly 900 votes, a very similar margin of victory to Adams’s over one-term Thompson PC MLA Kelly Bindle in the September 2019 provincial election.
“It’s still very surreal,” said Redhead shortly after learning that he would become the electoral division’s next MLA. “I’m still processing everything. I’m also feeling grateful to constituents in the riding who put their trust in me to be their voice at the Manitoba Legislative Assembly. I’m very honoured by that. Thank you, every singe one, every voter out there. Even if you didn’t vote for me I’m going to do my best to represent you in the legislature.”
Redhead’s campaign manager Blair Hudson said the candidate didn’t lose any of the polls in Thompson, according to unofficial results on the night of the byelection, which saw turnout of just under 20 per cent in a riding that usually sees well under 50 per cent turnout in recent elections, with less than 40 per cent of eligible voters casting ballots in the last provincial election.
Redhead said the results in Thompson and the rest of the riding were due to hard work, not only by himself, but by volunteers and his campaign manager and even Manitoba NDP leader Wab Kinew, who was in Thompson on election day, his third visit to the community since Redhead was nominated on April 23. The NDP candidate visited very community in the expansive but sparsely populated district since his nomination.
“The volunteers is what really made the big difference,” said Redhead. “We had a whole lot of people come over to support this campaign, from Winnipeg, Manitoba New Democrats, the MLAs and the dedicated local ones really are the ones who made a difference.”
Kinew said it was great to see Redhead win the seat, though he wished it had never been necessary.
“I don’t think any of us would have asked for this byelection because of the circumstance. But now that we have Eric elected, I think that we can move forward in a good way. We’re going to continue to honour Danielle. We think having a strong New Democrat in the legislature as a voice of communities in this area is a very fitting way to move forward.”
His active role in the campaign was both a way of honouring Adams and of following the example set by NDP members in Thompson, Kinew said.
“As somebody in a leadership position, I feel like you have to match the commitment of the people you’re working with every step of the way,” said the leader.
Redhead, who grew up and has lived much of his life in Thompson, is the second MLA of Indigenous descent for the electoral division but says that isn’t as significant as it used to be.
“I think there’s a shift in the way that people think about Indigenous people and I think we’ve seen that today with the results that we have,” Redhead said.
Now that the election is over, the MLA-elect says he plans to take some time to decompress and focus on aspects of his life unrelated to politics.
“It was only a month-and-a-half but it feels like so long,” he said. “I think for the next couple of days. we’re gonna unwind and really spend time with the kids.”
