Nipissing-Timiskaming remains red with a new Liberal MP
Liberal Anthony Rota was the longtime MP in the riding
The Nipissing-Timiskaming riding will remain red as Liberal Pauline Rochefort narrowly beat Conservative Garry Keller.
Long-time incumbent Anthony Rota left an opening in Nipissing-Timiskaming when he retired ahead of the election.
Rochefort, the current mayor of East Ferris, beat out Keller by about 1,000 votes.
She said it was a roller coaster of an election night.
"We started off the evening by leading and then we fell behind and, and so it's simply in the last hour," she said.
"We're almost 2:00 here in the morning in our in our hall, and it's in the last half hour that we pulled ahead."
Rochefort said she understands there's a lot of anger in the riding over affordability issues.
"There's people that are frustrated, for me the best way to tackle that is to move forward and take action," she said.
"I've always prided myself on being a leader that takes action."
The Conservatives had to pivot to Keller, a party insider, after candidate Cassidy Villeneuve suddenly stepped down from the race shortly before the start of the campaign.
Villeneuve said she stepped down, in part, because she faced pushback from certain members of the Conservative Party board in the riding.
Keller said he needs time to study the results of the election to understand what happened. He said that had the campaign not been so short, the outcome could have been different.
"As we saw during the election campaign, the Liberals had a much larger lead early on in the campaign," he said.
"In fact had this election been two days longer, I think we would have pulled it because it just continued to narrow and narrow and narrow."
He said a message from a resident in Cobalt stuck with him throughout the campaign. He was told he would get the resident's support - if he had his back.
"Those words will stay with me every day, no matter what I do," he said.
"The people of this riding want somebody to have their back. I only wish I could have done a better job in this campaign to bring it home to serve them and to serve this entire community."