The Green Party of P.E.I. has nominated five more candidates, in a nomination that saw a nail-bitingly close contest in the District of Charlottetown-Brighton.
In that district, architect Ole Hammarlund defeated naturopath and Root Cellar owner Kali Simmonds by a thin margin of four votes – 66 to 62. Party rules require that the winning candidate have a 50 per cent plus one margin, meaning that a change in a single vote could have altered the outcome.
Green party rules also allowed party members to cast a ballot for a “no candidate” option, as a means to allow members to express dissatisfaction with all candidates. In the case of the Charlottetown-Brighton nomination, two votes were cast for “no candidate.”
Hammarlund, who has designed and renovated a number of landmark buildings on P.E.I., including the Coles Building and the Atlantic Tech Centre, said he decided to run for office in hopes of improving the environment on P.E.I.
"For the last couple of years, I've been looking at my life's work and where the world has gone," Hammarlund.
"This isn't the place we want to leave for our children and grandchildren. I want to do something more. I realized that the hold-up, really, is in the politics. We need some politicians that actually do the right thing."
A total 132 party members attended the nomination meeting. The nominated candidates included media analyst Josh Weale in Stratford-Keppoch, teacher Josh Underhay in Charlottetown-Hillsborough Park, incumbent MLA Hannah Bell in Charlottetown-Belvedere, educator Karla Bernard in Charlottetown-Victoria Park and Hammarlund, in the only contested race, in Charlottetown-Brighton.
The nomination comes at a time when public opinion polls have put the Green Party at a virtual dead heat with the Liberal and PC parties. Recent polls by Corporate Research Associates and by MQO research showed the Green Party at 33 per cent of the popular vote, just shy of the Liberal Party and just ahead of the PCs.
Many of the nominees spoke about P.E.I.’s traditionally two-party political culture.
Weale said the notion of common purpose for Islanders was often lost in divisions between competing political parties, and in rural-urban alienation.
"‘We're all in the same boat’ is the mantra that I want to bring to politics with me, that I want to deliver on the doorsteps and in the debates that I attend," Weale said.
"We're miles from the idea of 'we're all in the same boat.' In fact, the mantra in P.E.I. politics is something more akin to 'your boat sucks and you're all idiots.'”
The sole incumbent MLA nominated on Wednesday, Hannah Bell, spoke about the rapid growth the party has seen in recent months. Bell became the party’s second elected MLA following a byelection in November 2017.
"We're doing this as a party that has very little history or road map. We have accelerated exponentially into this space from a lone out-rider to a caucus,” Bell said.
For the most part, Green party members living in other electoral ridings were permitted to cast ballots in nominations for candidates outside of their riding. However, the Charlottetown-Victoria Park district, which had a functional Electoral District Association, required that votes cast for the nominee be solely from residents living in that district.
Wednesday night’s nominations put the total number of Green party candidates at 12. The party currently has the largest number of nominated candidates of all Island political parties.
