Tories retain local ridings

Piccini and other incumbents returned to Queen's Park

As expected, David Piccini was re-elected on Thursday as the Progressive Conservatives swept our riding and all the adjacent ones on their way to a third-straight majority.

Ford’s PCs won 80 seats, the NDP 27, Liberals 14, Greens 2 and there is one independent.

Before the election, the PCs had 79 seats, so it’s hard see that the $189 million spent on an early, mid-winter election did much to give Ford the stronger mandate he said he needed. I guess it’s a good thing we all knew that really wasn’t the reason for the early election.

But give the guy credit, folks, he is the first premier to win three majorities since the 1950s, so clearly many voters like the guy.

In our riding, Northumberland-Peterborough South, Piccini had 52 per cent of the votes with Liberal Dorothy Noronha in second with 33 per cent and NDP candidate Bruce LePage in third with 9 per cent. Green Party candidate Maxwell Groves received about 4 per cent.

In all the surrounding ridings, PC incumbents were also re-elected. In Durham, Todd McCarthy was returned with 51 per cent of the votes. In Haliburton-Kawartha Lake-Brock, Laurie Scott received 52 per cent. Ric Breese was returned in Hastings-Lennox and Addington with 48 per cent. Tyler Alsopp was re-elected in Bay of Quinte with 45 per cent, while Dave Smith was returned with 41 per cent of the votes in Peterborough-Kawartha.

In the last provincial election in 2022, Piccini received 26,209 votes, 51 per cent of the total. Liberal Jeff Kawenzuk was a distant second with 12,861, or 25 per cent. NDP candidate Kim McArthur-Jackson came third with 6,721 votes, 13.1 per cent, while Green candidate Lisa Francis garnered 2,918 votes, 5.7 per cent.

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