One of the main candidates in this year’s scheduled Saskatchewan provincial election is locked in. Incumbent Doyle Vermette is looking to win the Cumberland riding for the Saskatchewan NDP. The main question: who will be Vermette’s challenger?
Cumberland remains one of the few remaining vacant seats for the Saskatchewan Party, who have yet to announce a nominee in the riding that covers Creighton, Denare Beach, La Ronge, Pelican Narrows, Sandy Bay and other northern communities.
A nomination meeting for the riding’s leadership was scheduled for March 16 in La Ronge, but according to a Saskatchewan Party official, the candidate chosen had to drop out of the race due to personal reasons.
The party does not currently have a date for when it will hold another nomination meeting or when the deadline to file for the riding may be.
The Saskatchewan Party has listed candidates for all but five of Saskatchewan’s provincial ridings, all held by NDP MLAs. Three ridings in Regina do not have listed candidates, along with both ridings in northern Saskatchewan - Athabasca, the riding which occupies northwest Saskatchewan and is held by longtime MLA Buckley Belanger and Cumberland, the riding that contains Creighton, Denare Beach, Pelican Narrows, Sandy Bay, La Ronge and all of northeast Saskatchewan.
The Cumberland riding is a historic stronghold for the Saskatchewan NDP. The NDP and their predecessor party, the Co-operative Commonwealth Party, have won every provincial election in the riding since Bill Berezowsky beat Liberal candidate George Newell in 1952. This year marks 68 years since another party has held the seat for Cumberland - a longer streak than the 52 year long streak the Manitoba NDP holds in the Flin Flon
One of the last two candidates who ran for the party in Cumberland appears to not be in the running for the spot. Joe Hordyski, a former mayor of La Ronge, told the National Observer he plans on running for a spot on La Ronge’s town council this fall. Hordyski ran for the Saskatchewan Party against Vermette in 2011. While Hordyski outperformed the last Saskatchewan Party candidate in the riding, he still lost to Vermette by almost 30 per cent, gathering 1,755 votes to Vermette’s 3,319.
The last candidate for the Saskatchewan Party in the Cumberland riding was another former La Ronge mayor, Thomas Sierzycki. One of Canada’s youngest mayors when first elected, Sierzycki stepped down to run against Vermette in the 2016 election. Vermette won by a larger margin against Sierzycki than he did against Hordyski, gathering 62 per cent of the vote and 3,375 votes compared to Sierzycki’s 29.7 per cent and 1,610 votes.
Vermette, born in Prince Albert and based out of La Ronge, was first elected to legislature in a byelection in June 2008.
