A Kootenay Central voice

Moments after Brittny Anderson entered the Hume Hotel’s banquet room in celebration of her Kootenay Central riding political victory, one of the first people she hugged was Jesse Woodward.

The current Nelson city councillor was a former municipal government workmate of Anderson’s in 2018 but stayed a close friend of the re-elected NDP candidate who took the riding seat for the third time during Saturday’s B.C. Election by around 1,500 votes.

Woodward was there for her Saturday — along with numerous NDP supporters and Rik Logtenberg and Keith Page from Nelson’s city council — just as she had been there for Nelson city council and other constituents of the Kootenay Central riding in its former state as the Nelson-Creston riding.

Although the city lost a strong and capable councillor in 2020 when she ran in a by-election to replace former NDP MLA Michelle Mungall, the region gained a strong and capable ally when Anderson moved to the provincial stage in her political career, said Woodward.

And no one has regretted her ascension to MLA, especially the residents and municipality of Nelson, said Logtenberg.

“We have a bit of experience seeing what Brittny can do for this riding, and for Nelson in particular, over the last four plus years, and it’s been a huge advantage for us,” he said.

“She is super available to us, we can literally text her, call her, she will always pick up. And she knows the issues having been on city council, and the RDCK.”

“I would say she actually even knows the subtlety of the issues, and it’s not just the issue, but the background, the context,” added Woodward.

Through her time on Nelson city council — as well as being the city’s representative on the Regional District of Central Kootenay’s board of directors — she not only developed a working relationship with those governing bodies, but honed her political will and acumen.

“She has a fearlessness which is absolutely critical for an MLA, to be able to pick up the phone, call the premier and make no bones about it and argue for what this region needs,” said Logtenberg.

And she focuses it all through a rural lens, said Woodward.

“She is also an incredibly strong advocate for rural. Rural is always fighting that density issue where we just don’t have the population but we still need the services everyone else does, and Brittny fully recognizes that and then capitalizes on that in the provincial legislature, that rural is just as important as urban,” he said. “She knows this (Kootenay Central) area with its fine grain details and she speaks with knowledge.”

“And heart, too, having been born and raised here; she loves the area and that comes out,” Logtenberg pointed out. “Having talked to other MLAs and ministers about Brittny, they say that, ‘You have this incredible advocate that just through force of will and force of passion she gets things done.’ Sometimes that is just what it takes.”

Although Anderson won her seat in the Kootenay Central dance, the picture across the province is not so clear. The full results of the 2024 provincial election in B.C. may not be known for another week, as election officials add up the votes in a number of close races between the B.C. NDP and the provincial Conservatives.

As of Sunday morning, the NDP were leading or elected in 46 seats — out of 93 total seats — while the Conservatives are temporarily holding sway in 45 ridings, and the B.C. Green Party had candidates elected in two ridings. However, it takes 47 seats for a party to form a majority government.

There are a total of 11 ridings that will be under scrutiny — six held right now by the NDP, with five under a Conservative majority — with no projected winner at this point, and two with a margin of victory of less than 100 votes (automatically triggering a recount).

In a statement, Elections B.C. said some of the ballots cannot be fully tabulated until the final count on Oct. 26, despite 99.72 per cent of the voting results coming in just after midnight on Sunday.

Whatever the result, Anderson will be in Victoria when the next session of the legislature convenes, picking up where she left off.

“I have to continue working hard and being a strong voice in Victoria for my constituents,” she said Saturday night as her name was checked off as “elected” on the B.C. Elections website. “It is the work I have been doing for years and I am so excited to get back to work and get back to Victoria and, hopefully, we have a strong majority government.”

She admitted there is no control over what voters are going to do.

“But what you can control is working hard as an MLA, work hard as a candidate and try to pull out supporters to vote and we saw that tonight,” she said. “But it is important that I am an MLA for everyone, including those people that didn’t vote for me. I will do that, and my office has been doing that for years, and we are bringing everyone’s voice to Victoria.”