ESTEVAN - Phil Zajac says he is disappointed with the results for the Estevan-Big Muddy constituency in the Oct. 28 provincial election.
Zajac, who is the leader of the Buffalo Party of Saskatchewan, was their candidate in Estevan-Big Muddy. He finished third in the riding with 740 votes, behind incumbent Lori Carr of the Saskatchewan Party, who finished with 5,112 votes, and Phil Smith of the New Democratic Party (926 votes).
Zajac said a lot of work went into trying to win the Estevan-Big Muddy riding this year. He was also the Buffalo candidate for Estevan four years ago, finishing second to Carr with 24.26 per cent of the popular vote.
"It's four years of work," said Zajac. "In comparison to one month of work last time [in 2020], so it's a lot of work. And we got a great team. We have a great group of people that are running, but unfortunately, we didn't have the result that we wanted."
"We did a lot of everything. We did town halls, we went to town meetings," he added later. "I went to all the emergency room closure meetings, went to all doctor retention meetings. We're the only people that were there, and it's a little disappointing."
He said they did a lot of door-knocking as well and had a good response.
"We had lots of people [at the Buffalo Party's social Monday night in Estevan]. All through today, probably 80 people came. We got a lot of support in Estevan, just the numbers didn't reflect that well."
He said they never expected they would finish behind the NDP locally in the election, and he didn't expect anything from the Saskatchewan United Party.
"It's kind of surprising," said Zajac.
As for the results for the 15 other Buffalo Party candidates in the province, Zajac said they're getting votes in all the ridings.
"Again, not the results that we hoped for, but we're a new party still. We've only been around for not quite five years, so there's lots of work to do, and Buffalo's not going anywhere."
Zajac said the party will carry on with the work that it's been doing, and he is looking forward to the next election in four years.
Zajac had the most votes of any Buffalo Party candidate in 2020, and also had the most votes for the party this time. He became the party's leader in March 2022.
Andrew Cey of the Saskatchewan United Party (SUP) was fourth with 449 votes in his first foray in running for elected office. He said he was glad to give the party a voice in Estevan-Big Muddy.
"I wasn't sure what to expect," said Cey. "I'm kind of happy, being the first time out, to do what we did and to have the votes that I did get, I thank those people. I'm looking forward to the future, but I guess there's some work to do, and if we can help move the needle and bring forward the issues that did get brought forward, it helps the people of the constituency, and that's what we're there for," said Cey.
Cey described it as a good and rewarding experience, and he met some really good people. It was a challenge, because he lives outside the constituency in Lang, so he had to take some time off from work to get into Estevan-Big Muddy for some campaigning.
"It's just trying to help out, so I'll be looking forward to a little bit of rest now that we're at the end,' said Cey.
He was hoping the SUP would pick up a few seats, and he was disappointed to see them shut out.
Patterson, who finished fifth with 82 votes, thought the presence of the Buffalo Party and the SUP hurt his support. Patterson said he wasn't expecting to win, but he was hoping to have a good conversation with people in Estevan-Big Muddy. He ran what he called a zero-dollar campaign.
"I did get out door-knocking a couple of times, but I didn't have the money to campaign or pay people to campaign for me, unfortunately, this time around," said Patterson.
He participated in the Estevan Chamber of Commerce's all-candidates forum last week.
The party wanted to have a candidate nominated in every constituency, he said, but three of them didn't get their paperwork in on time to be on the ballot.
Patterson believes the Greens shifted the conversation on small modular reactors (SMR) while bringing up other alternatives to nuclear. He doesn't think the party's stance on SMRs hurt the Greens in Estevan-Big Muddy; if SMRs are to be built in Saskatchewan, the first would be in the Estevan area.
He wishes Saskatchewan had a more representative democracy, because he believes that anyone who didn't vote for the Saskatchewan Party on Monday had a vote that didn't count for the next four years. Patterson believes the people who voted for the Greens in the election think the party's platform has a place in the government.
"The Sask Party has said they have heard … and they've said they'd be interested in doing government differently and politics differently, and one of the things with participatory democracy that I could see them doing was to invite other parties onto certain cabinets committees or an advisory role," said Patterson.
Smith could not be reached for comment.
