Liberal Chris Sutton fails in bid to unseat Lewis

Liberal candidate Chris Sutton (left) and his wife Jennifer monitored the federal election results in Essex.

It was a bittersweet night for Liberal candidate Chris Sutton.

While his first time on the ballot did not generate the personal result that he and his Essex riding supporters wanted, the Liberals will once again form the government.

Sutton said he was happy to see Mark Carney defeat the Conservatives.

“This is the Prime Minister we need. He knows how to deal with Mr. (President) Trump. He’ll build a team to move forward. I am proud to say I was on that team,” Sutton told the River Town Times.

A small group of the local Liberal faithful gathered at Chuck’s Roadhouse in Essex and early goings saw incumbent Conservative Chris Lewis and Sutton in a tight race.

Five minutes after the polls closed the first of 278 polls reported but by 25 polls Lewis already had a comfortable lead.

“We had a fantastic team. We had some of the best volunteers ever. They put everything into it. When you are looking at a short time frame for an election, we started out digging ourselves out of a hole and going from there.”

It was a 35-day campaign, one that saw party leaders visit Windsor-Essex and an election that had the Essex riding with the third highest advance polls turnout with 34,668.

The polls closed at 9:30 p.m. and it took to well after midnight for the final results to be determined. During the recent provincial election, it was less than half an hour as the tabulating was done electronically. This federal election the count was manual.

During the campaign and at his watch party Monday night, Sutton wore his trademark cowboy hat and boots and often referred himself as a worker for the workers.

“We did the best we could. We’ll see what happens in four years from now and come back better and even strong than we were this time.”

Lewis returns to Ottawa for a third term and maintains the seat he first won back in 2019.

“There were a lot of people not happy with the current MP and he is the MP again,” said Sutton. Congratulations to Mr. Lewis, I hoped he learned some stuff over the campaign.”

NDP newcomer Lori Wightman from Amherstburg finished a distant third behind Lewis and Sutton. It was her first time running on a federal card and she told the River Town Times that she was disappointed with the final results.

“I was hopeful that Essex County would want someone who shows up. We (NDP) have to regroup and rebuild,” said Wightman.

Throughout her campaign, she said that people are scared of what the future will bring. Asked what her political future is, Wightman commented, “I’ve learned in life not to plan too far ahead. I’ve been going non-stop for 37 days and am going to spend some time with my family.”

It was a disappointing night for the NDP as Jagmeet Singh stepped down as the party leader and locally, Windsor-West’s Brian Masse was defeated after serving for 23 years. Conservative Harb Gill won in Windsor West while Conservative Kathy Borrelli won in Windsor-Tecumseh-Lakeshore.

Liberal Chris Sutton fails in bid to unseat Lewis

By Fred Groves