Reynolds was confident of victory even when declared defeated
Tim Shoults
Chief Staff Writer
One of John Reynolds' first calls Tuesday morning after narrowly winning re-election to Parliament was from Peter Mansbridge.
The CBC anchor called to apologize for his network's declaration the night before that the veteran Conservative MP had been defeated by Liberal candidate Blair Wilson in the riding of West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast.
The declaration, made shortly before 10 p.m. PST Monday night (June 28), turned out to be premature, as a 1,200-vote lead for Wilson evaporated in the face of polls from Powell River and the Sunshine Coast which swung the riding back to Reynolds by about 1,600 votes.
"I said, 'My mother went to bed in Toronto thinking I had lost, but at least you said nice things about me,'" Reynolds said he told Mansbridge.
While political watchers of all stripes were captivated by the see-saw battle between Reynolds and Wilson all night, Reynolds himself was quite calm - even after seeing the CBC declare him defeated and his opponent starting to give an acceptance speech on TV.
Reynolds, who was monitoring the results in an office beside his West Vancouver campaign headquarters, phoned his campaign workers in Powell River and the Sunshine Coast to check on delayed results. They showed him ahead of Wilson by about 950 votes in Powell River and 2,400 votes ahead on the Sunshine Coast in polls that had yet to report.
"I knew then if I had 100 polls to go then I would win it," he said. "We weren't sweating very much."
That's why, when Wilson launched his victory speech, which aired live on Global TV, Reynolds admitted he was feeling just a tiny bit smug. "I was sitting in the office and I had a smile on my face, saying, 'This guy's going to look really stupid in about an hour.'"
The win was Reynolds' closest since returning to federal politics in 1997 with the Reform Party, but his margin of victory was still slightly arger than his first election to Parliament in 1972 as a Progressive Conservative in Richmond.
The come-from-behind victory was bittersweet for Reynolds, as he will be returning to Ottawa in opposition rather than government for a third consecutive term.
"You always like to win, but I was looking forward to being in government," he admitted. "Two weeks ago it looked like we were going to be the government. Out polls showed a dramatic drop in B.C. in the last few days."
Reynolds credited the Liberals' strategy of the last two weeks, which focused on creating fear of a Conservative government, for swinging the momentum in what polls indicated was a dead heat between the two parties.
"The Prime Minister got onto something at the end and he did a good job," Reynolds said. "He made people forget about the corruption and the scandal, and you have to give him credit for that."
The Conservatives had their own problems: "We should have made sure some people kept their mouths closed," Reynolds said bluntly, citing comments like those of Abbotsford MP Randy White on abortion and same-sex marriage which were used by the Liberals "to attack Stephen Harper and his so-called hidden agenda."
Reynolds feels that the same issues that drained Conservative votes across Canada contributed to the tighter race locally.
He admitted that his own role as national campaign co-chair for the Conservatives, which saw him spend a quarter of the campaign working in Ontario and Quebec, may also have affected his vote totals, "but we may not have had 24 seats in Ontario if I hadn't been there," he said.
Despite the disappointments, Reynolds is looking forward to returning to Ottawa and holding the Liberals' feet to the fire in a minority government which looks like it will be supported by the NDP.
"It's a Liberal-socialist minority and we'll see how that goes."
Reynolds expects that there will be at least a year or possibly two before the next election, as he predicts both the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois would likely lose support in a subsequent election."The next election will be between the Liberals and the Conservatives," he said.
Reynolds wouldn't confirm if he would be fighting that election or not.
"I haven't made a decision yet, but I'll make it when the time comes," he said.
In January of this year, when he announced he would run for the newly-created Conservative Party, Reynolds was endorsed by former Progressive Conservative candidate Dave Thomas, who also served as the candidate's official agent. At the time, Reynolds said he would make an "excellent candidate in the future" and Thomas himself said "don't be surprised" if he sought the nomination in the future.
-with files from David Burke, Whistler Question
