The ballot in the Parksville-Qualicum constituency is about to get another name on it, once Gerri Schmidt finishes her canvassing.
The Parksville resident and longtime Green Party activist confirmed this week that she has been approved by the party to take the nomination to run in the May 14 provincial election.
“I’m still working to get the signatures I need to run, but when I get them I will be officially running,” she said.
Schmidt, a mother of two and grandmother of four, has been active with the party on the provincial council as a director at large. She said she opted to throw her hat in the ring because if she didn’t she wouldn’t have anyone for whom to vote.
“In the 2006 election I didn’t feel I had anyone to vote for and then I read the Green Party platform online and said, gosh, they think just like me,” she said.
“I’ve been refusing to run for the past two years, but this time I just looked at my husband and said, it looks like I’m going to have to run if I want to vote.”
Schmidt said she plans to run a very low-profile campaign.
“I’m not going to be pushing anything in particular,” she said. “As a party we have a more balanced look at things and we don’t want to go too much one way or the other.
“A lot of people think the Green Party may be very radical on the environmental side but while we are very interested in it, we can’t go into government and not be balanced. We need to work towards getting a balance in every area.”
She said she sees health care as one of the key issues in the area, along with the proposed Enbridge pipeline, which she opposes.
