Liberal MP Larry Bagnell has won his sixth term as Yukon’s representative in Parliament, Global News projects.
The longtime MP was declared the winner in a razor-thin race against Conservative Jonas Smith, while NDP candidate and former president of the Yukon Federation of Labour Justin Lemphers came in third.
Bagnell’s impressive career was briefly interrupted by a close defeat to Conservative Ryan Leef in 2011, an anomaly in a territory that has voted to the left since 1987.
Leef, a former RCMP officer, was able to trounce Bagnell by painting him as a supporter of the locally-unpopular long-gun registry. But his re-election bid hit a rough patch when he performed a citizen’s arrest on a woman caught vandalizing his campaign signs, forcing her to the ground to handcuff her.
Whether because of that bizarre event, or the Liberal wave that swept through B.C. spreading north, Bagnell ultimately won back his seat in a relative landslide in 2015 after earning 10,887 votes (53.65 per cent) to Leef’s 4,928 votes (24.29 per cent).
Candidates
Liberal: Larry Bagnell
Conservative: Jonas Smith
NDP: Justin Lemphers
Green: Lenore Morris
People’s Party of Canada: Joseph Zelezny
Demographics
European: 24,990, 71.2 per cent
Aboriginal: 8,320, 23.7 per cent
Filipino: 1,330, 3.8 per cent
Chinese: 625, 1.8 per cent