As the dust settles from the 2024 B.C. Provincial Election, the NDP and Conservative candidates in the Vernon-Lumby riding are mum on officially accepting or conceding.
Incumbent NDP MLA Harwinder Sandhu told The Morning Star late Saturday night that she "thinks it is too tight to call but people have sent a clear message, and that's where we need to focus on."
Preliminary results have Sandhu leading Conservative candidate Dennis Giesbrecht by 384 votes. Giesbrecht has 11,144 (41.08 per cent) of the vote, while Sandhu has 11,528 (42.5 per cent).
Giesbrecht told The Morning Star on Saturday that it was too close to call and that he would wait until the official results before conceding.
Recounts will take place between Oct. 26 and 28 in certain ridings. Just two are undergoing recounts (Surrey-Centre and Juan de Fuca-Malahat), as the top two candidates are within 100 votes.
When the votes between two candidates are separated by more than 100, a judicial recount may be requested within six days of the final count. Giebsrecht has until Nov. 4 to request one.
According to Elections BC, an official recount has not been requested yet for the Vernon-Lumby riding.
From Oct. 26-28, counts for outstanding absentee and mail-in ballots will take place. Elections B.C. estimates 49,000 to be counted.
Candidates cannot officially be declared elected until the final vote is complete.
Independent Kevin Acton conceded on Saturday, after finishing a distant third, with 4,196 votes (15.47 per cent).
However, since he conceded, the Lumby Mayor endorsed MLA Harwinder Sandhu.
"In my heart, I want to be the guy who says 'May the best person win,' but I can't say I'm not frustrated with what the Conservatives did, dropping a candidate into our riding after not being successful in his own riding," said Acton of Giesbrecht. "He doesn't know us at all here, and has really made no effort to get to know us here."
"Harwinder is committed to the community. She's at every event I go to as mayor. I have a lot of respect for Harwinder."
Conservative nominee for the federal riding of Vernon-Lake Country-Monashee, Scott Anderson, decried Acton's endorsement.
"Kevin Acton has effectively announced that he's not ready for senior-level politics," Anderson said. "Kevin seems to revel in the NDP victory, but it鈥檚 mainly because he was the author of it and not because he thinks it was good for the province or the people of B.C. His loud lament against parachute candidates rings hollow in view of the fact that by his own admission, he was ready to run as an independent even if the candidate picked was local to Vernon."
Anderson added that he feels for the good honest people who were "lured by media clickbait" that independents could win the election.
"Some people work for the betterment of the province and the country, and others work for their own ego. Kevin has made it quite clear where his primary interest lies."
Acton told The Morning Star that he was willing to run as a B.C. Conservative "if the opportunity was presented to him," but it didn't, so he chose to run as an independent candidate.
"I felt like I had a duty to the people who already funded and supported me for a middle-right option, so I kept going," Acton said, although he did admit his naivete with regards to big party politics. "I was a little bit naive to the fact that big party politics count on big parties, right? There was a ton of money spent in this riding to make sure they got the votes they did."
