About 45 minutes after polls closed, a change came over the crowd assembled at Hotel 540. Until then, the B.C. Liberals’ May 14 election night celebrations in Kamloops had been politely upbeat. But as early counts showed the Liberals leading over the B.C. NDP, 43 seats to 26, the whispering began: “This is majority territory.”
From his place in the thick of the crowd, Kamloops-South Liberal candidate Todd Stone, whose riding includes Chase, felt the shift too.
Stone’s victory for the party was decisive. More than 5,300 votes stood between him and NDP candidate Tom Friedman.
Stone credits the Liberals’ victory to Premier Christy Clark’s ability to connect with voters in the campaign’s more “unfiltered” setting, and to the Liberals offering a better message than the competition.
“I think British Columbians and the people of Kamloops were concerned first and foremost about jobs and continuing our economic momentum,” he said. “So you put all of that together, throw in a dash of really hard work at the local level, a great team on both the Kamloops campaigns and here we are.”
