Wins are wins for N.B. Liberals, but Greens celebrate too

After most Liberals had drifted away from their byelection victory party at a downtown Bathurst pub Monday night, the event took a surprising turn.

Defeated Green candidate Serge Brideau arrived with a small group of his campaign workers.

Brideau had stopped in earlier to congratulate Liberal leader Susan Holt on beating him in Bathurst East-Nepisiguit-St. Isidore.

For his second appearance, he brought his guitar. Soon he was performing Folsom Prison Blues by Johnny Cash and songs by his own folk-rock band, Les Hôtesses d'Hilaire.

The remaining Liberals, including Holt's chief of staff Alaina Lockhart and former Bathurst MLA Brian Kenny, seemed alternately bemused and confused as their celebration started to look more like a Green hoedown.

Not a bad metaphor for Monday's byelection results, come to think of it.

As expected, the Liberals swept the three races, in Bathurst East-Nepisiguit-St. Isidore, Restigouche-Chaleur and Dieppe. All three had been Liberal before.

More importantly, Holt got into the legislature, allowing her to go toe-to-toe in debates with Premier Blaine Higgs, whom she hopes to defeat in next year's provincial election. 

But the Greens nonetheless squeezed their way into the political frame — or at least avoided being squeezed out.

Brideau got 35.4 per cent of the vote against Holt, almost tripling the Green share in the riding last time. 

"I gained a lot and I'm back in 2024, for sure," he said. 

In Restigouche-Chaleur, Green candidate Rachel Boudreau, a former mayor, got 31.6 per cent of the vote, placing second to winner Marco LeBlanc. Progressive Conservative Anne Bard-Lavigne trailed with 15.8 per cent.

And in Dieppe, where Liberal Richard Losier scooped up more than two-thirds of the vote, the Greens had 18.8 per cent, compared to a dismal 8.6 per cent for the third-place PCs.

The Tories didn't run a candidate against Holt.

"It's interesting to see that in New Brunswick, for francophones at this moment, the second party is not the Conservatives, it's the Greens," says Roger Ouellette, a political scientist at the University of Moncton. 

The Green vote wasn't enough to win in three traditionally Liberal strongholds.

But if the party's support improves at the same rate in ridings that are less reliably Liberal, it could make it difficult for Holt to become premier in 2024.

Ouellette pointed out that the Greens have also been competitive in the mostly anglophone southern part of the province.

"We will see in the next election if the Greens stay in touch with voters and are able to have good candidates like this time and obtain some votes," Ouellette said.

"Maybe it will split the vote and it will be an advantage for the Conservatives."

In that sense, Monday's results represent no change to the existing dynamic in New Brunswick politics.

A best-ever for the Greens still isn't a breakthrough. Wins are wins: Holt will be in the legislature and Brideau won't. There'll be no crashing that party.

Holt argued the approach that led to her victory can be applied province-wide.

"People have lost faith in politics and government. So giving them hope that it can change is hard work that we need to do everywhere, because I don't think any vote can be taken for granted," she said Monday night.

Capturing traditional Liberal ridings, however, is a lot easier than building party support in areas where the PCs remain strong.

Sure, the Tories remain equally dead on arrival in most francophone areas — something Higgs blamed on the Liberals, telling reporters his opponents benefit from language divisions.

"I feel that we see that politically in the province, where there's certainly a value for the Liberals to maintain a political divide along linguistic lines," he said.

Higgs said given the history of the ridings, "the probability is low" that his party would win them anytime soon.

But he has shown in two straight elections that he doesn't need to do well in those places to win.

If Monday's results represent a political status quo, frozen in place — the Liberals with a Green problem, and the Greens with a Liberal problem — that's good news for the leader, and the party, already in power.