Saskatchewan premier-designate Scott Moe faces the unenviable task of bridging massive divisions after the 2024 election.
Rural versus urban. Issues involving social gender rights versus creeping social conservatism. The concerns of professional health providers and teachers versus those prioritizing tax cuts and less government spending.
Our province may be emerging from the 2024 campaign more divided than ever.
It’s unfortunate for a province, but it’s as unfortunate for Saskatchewan’s two major political leaders who had far better stories to tell Monday night.
For premier-designate Scott Moe and the Sask. Party, winning a fifth-straight term was a very special night and should have been seen as such.
We have not seen a five-term government in Saskatchewan in 60 years — not since the end of 20-year Tommy Douglas/Woodrow Lloyd Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) administration. (The original Liberal government after Saskatchewan entered Confederation in 1905 and won six straight elections, losing in 1929.)
Yet Monday night, we heard from a premier-designate humbled by the divisions he now must somehow now try to bridge.
“Recent history has not been kind to incumbent governments,” Moe told a small-town hockey rink crowd in his hometown of Shellbrook. “There is another half of the voters who voted for someone else. I want to say I heard the message …
“We must do better … We have lost your support. We must do better in health and education.”
This wasn’t exactly the exuberance one might have expected from a premier and party whose term was hallmarked by its cocky boastfulness and eagerness to appeal to people on the right-hand side of the divide.
“Friends, we came so close,” Beck said in her speech. “We gave people reason to hope again and that’s not nothing.”
Beck is right that it’s “not nothing.” But it didn’t feel close.
The NDP got Athabasca back Monday night. It got back all of Regina, knocking off cabinet ministers, including Gene Makowsky, Christine Tell and Laura Ross.
Sometimes, election losses can simply be chalked up to being in the wrong seat at right at the wrong time, as seemed the case with the likable Makowsky. That said, it’s rather hard to believe that Tell’s marshals service and bumbling of provincial tire recycling contracts didn’t come into play.
In fact, the solid urban foothold the Sask. Party had worked for years to secure crumbled with the likes of Justice Minister Bronwyn Eyre (who helped pilot through the pronoun consent law, Bill 137, offending much of the legal community in the process) and former health and now Policing and Corrections Minister Paul Merriman (the minister most associated with the health-care mess and now overseeing the marshals service) falling.
But entering this election, the NDP were 17 seats short of forming government. And with little chance of picking up any rural seats, things would have had to go perfectly if there was any hope of that happening.
Things seldom go perfectly in politics.
Beck’s NDP surprisingly failed to gain ground in Prince Albert or Moose Jaw where it very much hoped to sweep or win at least three or four of the seats.
Similarly, hopes of winning bedroom communities like White City-Qu’Appelle and Martensville-Blairmore — both classified as rural seats — were dashed as the evening went on.
True rural seats? Well, they remain as remote to the NDP as they have been for most of the last 60 years.
The NDP wasn’t a serious threat anywhere in rural Saskatchewan — not even in seats like Saskatchewan Rivers or Lumsden-Morse where we were supposed to see the Saskatchewan United Party split the vote. Both Leader Jon Hromek and former Sask. Party MLA turned SUP member Nadine Wilson finished a distant third in their respective ridings.
And while the NDP registered 59 per cent in the two major cities, it struggled to break 40 per cent provincewide (So much for all the pre-election poll hype showing them five per cent ahead of the Sask. Party).
It could have been a glorious day for one or perhaps both parties, given the way these results unfolded. It could have been a better day for the province.
But at the end of this gruelling journey, each party staggered home … only to find a province perhaps more divided than ever.
Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.
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