Bowen election: did national park call the shots?

An examination of the numbers in the November 19 vote on Bowen appears to show that, despite a plea from many constituents, and many candidates, the national park issue became the dominating issue in the election.

In what may have been the biggest election surprise of all, of the six candidates supported continuing negotiations with Parks Canada, not one was successful. Of the eight candidates who either rejected a national park reserve or had reservations, all but one was elected.

The three incumbents whose campaign included favouring the national park — Nerys Poole (who ran for mayor), Doug Hooper and Peter Frinton — all lost. The three newcomers for whom support of a a national park was a large part of their platform — Rob Cairns, Silvaine Zimmermann and Jonathan Bell — finished 10th, 11th and 12th respectively. Out of 12.

On the other hand, of the six who will form Bowen’s new council, not one campaigned for a a national park and all either said they did not support continuing the national park reserve journey or had reservations.

Mayor-elect Jack Adelaar stressed commitment to improving Bowen finances, vitalizing Snug Cove and other issues such as seniors housing. Poole, too, spoke of those same issues but the difference was that Adelaar felt it best to tackle them without the national park to contend with.

In total votes cast, the six who openly campaigned for a continuation of national park negotiations collectively had a total count of 4,044 votes. Divide that by six candidates and you get an average of 674 votes for each national park supporting candidate.

The eight against or who did not strongly support the national park — Adelaar, Wolfgang Duntz, Alison Morse, Andrew Stone, Daron Jennings, Tim Rhodes, Cro Lucas and George Zawadzki — had a collective total of 8,068 votes. When divided by eight candidates, on average that makes 1,008 votes per non-national park candidate.

That works out to, again on average, 334 more votes for each non-national park supporter than national park supporter. Further, six candidates ran for two positions on the Islands Trust and Duntz and Stone won while Jennings was third, all non-supporters of the national park.

National park supporters Hooper, Zimmermann and Cairns, in that order, made up the bottom three.

In the final analysis, it seems obvious that regardless of promises of a second vote, a majority did not want a national park reserve. To ensure there was not going to be one, or the distraction of continued musings over one, the electorate made the national park reserve the dominant issue of the 2011 Bowen municipal election.

If the community opinion vote had been conducted months earlier, as originally planned, would Saturday’s results have been different?

That appears to be one for the legions of Bowen political pundits to debate.