Boundary-Similkameen results: Liberal candidate Larson wins wide-open riding

Linda Larson has taken the riding of Boundary-Similkameen for the Liberals, in what was anyone’s race to win.

Larson took the riding with 47.3 per cent of the vote as of 9:48 p.m. on election night. NDP candidate Sam Hancheroff won 37.9 per cent and Green candidate John Kwasnica won 9.1 per cent. Independent candidate Mischa Popoff won 3.7 per cent.

John Slater, the Liberal incumbent, stepped aside before the election and former NDP candidate Marji Basso also decided not to run, leaving this riding wide open for new candidates.

It was an interesting race, particularly after Mischa Popoff was forced to resign from the Conservative party and run as an independent after making controversial comments about single mothers, in a newspaper column.

As revealed by the Vancouver Sun, Popoff wrote in a column that appeared in the Kelowna Daily Courier, “No one can blame a woman who experiences divorce or abandonment after having kids. The issue is with women who enter parenthood with their eyes wide open without a man by their side, either by using a man to get pregnant or through a sperm bank.”

“In either case, unless they’re very well off, the kids they bestow upon this world are headed for disaster.”

Larson is a city councillor in Oliver, and a former mayor of the town. She also served on B.C.’s Small Business Roundtable, and has run a free muffin program at South Okanagan Secondary School for the past 12 years.