For more information on the Battlefords, please click here.
The Battlefords was first contested in the 1917 provincial election. For the most part, The Battlefords was a Liberal stronghold until the historic CCF victory in 1944. In two the three by-elections in the Battlefords held since 1944, the Liberals were the winners in 1950 and 1996, while the NDP took the other one in 1980. But as far as general elections go, The Battlefords has elected a CCF/NDP MLA in every provincial election from 1944 onward except for 1982 and 1999. Eiling Kramer, who was a powerful cabinet minister in the Douglas, Lloyd and Blakeney Governments, won The Battlefords eight times in a row - 1952, 1956, 1960, 1964, 1967, 1971, 1975 and 1978 - and never lost once.
The Battlefords disappeared as a constituency from 1995 to 2003, then returned to the political map. In 2003, former New Democrat MP Len Taylor beat Liberal MLA Jack Hillson to win The Battlefords, and was re-elected in 2007. Taylor served as Government House Leader and Minister of Health in the Calvert Government. After Calvert quit as NDP Leader, Taylor served as interim Opposition Leader from 2008 to 2009.
Taylor is running for re-election tomorrow against the same two individuals who challenged him in The Battlefords in 2007, those being Herb Cox of the Saskatchewan Party and Liberal Ryan Bater. But there is a twist. Bater is now Leader of the Saskatchewan Liberal Party, and whatever remaining resources the Liberals have are being poured into Bater's campaign. In fact, the Liberals made the monumental decision for this election to only run a handful of candidates, and to instead throw all of their resources into Bater's contest. It is a very bold and highly risky gambit, and it raises the stakes immensely in this race.
For Taylor, there is no tomorrow for him if he loses. Len has already had a political career at the federal, municipal and now provincial levels. Defeat for him tomorrow effectively marks the end of his political career, and the NDP lose a seat in an election where every seat will count for them.
But it is for the Saskatchewan Party where perhaps the stakes are even higher in this seat. Since the party was formed in 1997, The Battlefords has been the one seat where results are always disappointing for the Sask Party. The Sask Party came within 300 votes of winning this seat in 2007, and likely never imagined that Bater would become the next Liberal Leader, which complicates their plans to win the seat. As mentioned before the stakes are high for the Sask Party in this race. If Bater wins this seat tomorrow, it poses a threat to the Sask Party's dominance over free enterprise voters, at least in the long run. A big part of the rise of the Sask Party has been the Liberal Party's failure to create and maintain a consistent identity as a free enterprise party that does not kowtow to the hated federal Liberals. Those identity problems remain for the Saskatchewan Liberals, especially when they share the same name and the same red and white colour scheme as the federal party, and bring in federal politicians to campaign with Bater. But a Bater victory here tomorrow throws open the door for future competition for free enterprise voters in Saskatchewan, and that's something the Sask Party can't afford, at least right now.
The 2011 race in the Battlefords is one of the most intriguing and electrifying in this election; it captures the imagination. It is a seat where the Liberals are making a last stand; if Bater loses The Battlefords tomorrow, its game over for the Liberals, in a part of the world where the Liberal brand has become extinct. The outcome of The Battlefords race will be fascinating to watch.
As far as predictions go about the outcome of this seat, that is difficult to forecast. Sask Party support is exploding all over the province, but the governing party is locked in hand-to-hand combat with a second free enterprise party. Throw into the mix that neither the Sask Party nor the Liberals hold this seat and that Taylor is not going to go away easily, and we have a real donnybrook on our hands. That said, I'm not prepared to predict an outcome in this seat.
Just so he doesn't feel left out, Owen Swiderski rounds out the slate of candidates in The Battlefords - he is the Green candidate. Swiderski has a role to play tomorrow too, since Green parties tend to draw votes from across the political spectrum, but usually twice as many votes from the NDP as from non-NDP parties.
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