There was not much doubt in Fort Whyte that Pallister would win. He had a strong support system at his headquarters and it was quite evident that he was confident he would win when a Pizza Hotline employee showed up with 20+ pizzas well before the polls had even closed.
Leading up to the byelection there had been a lot of attention and focus on Pallister considering he is the replacement of previous Tory leader Hugh McFadyen, and many were curious to hear what he would have to say after McFadyen stepped down after losing last year's provincial election.
The chants began to break out at the headquarters as the votes began to tally up - Pallister was winning, followed by Liberal candidate Bob Axworthy, followed by NDP candidate Brandy Schmidt, followed by Green Party candidate Donnie Benham, and in dead last the one and only Independent Party "MrJetzTV" - Darrell Ackman.
The race stayed fairly the same throughout the night, with Pallister always in the lead ahead of Axworthy and the others. By the end of the night when all the votes were in the totals read as follows:
Brian Pallister - PC - 3626
Bob Axworthy - Liberal - 2074
Brandy Schmidt - NDP - 739
Donnie Benham - Green Party - 113
Darrell Ackman - Independent - a WHOPPING 19.
Why anyone allowed Ackman to run in this thing to start off with is beyond me but I'd rather not get into that because it's neither here nor there...
After waiting what felt like forever for Pallister to finally come into the room and step up to the podium, he did. He was greeted with cheers by his faithful supporters and up to the podium he went without a hesitation.
He dove into his speech starting with, "it's a great night in Fort Whyte," and continued on to quote basically every famous person he could think of - hardly producing his own material. After about the seventh cliche I could barely listen to him talk about nothing important for very much longer and just when I thought my arm would fall off in the scrum - he walked away!
Brian Pallister stood at the podium and talked for seven minutes straight and then ditched the media. Just walked away.
One reporter suggested, "How 'bout a few questions." Pallister replied with ignoring his existence and the rest of us media.
Needless to say none of us were too please when we were told, "he's not talking to media until tomorrow." By his rep Brandy... or Mandy. Something with an "Eeee" at the end.
Overall the atmosphere was quite exciting and positive but considering politics don't excite me in anyway, I was not pleased when I couldn't get a question in - I had such a good one ready to go!
Hopefully that's the last election I have to cover in a while because quite frankly I'm no good at it and I'm even worse at calling in a rant about something I'm not fully educated on. That was a sucky feeling. But you know what a good feeling is? Going to bed. Which is what I'm about to do now.
G'night!
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