Sioux Lookout resident Susan Barclay has filed the necessary papers to seek the NDP nomination for the proposed new riding of Kenora in the next election.
Barclay had run for the NDP in the Kenora-Rainy River riding in 2000—garnering 21 percent of the vote while the party only received eight percent nationally.
With new polls putting the NDP in the high teens nationally, Barclay has high hopes of winning the new riding this time around.
Within the boundaries of the proposed Kenora riding (which would see Rainy River split off and joined with the current riding of Thunder Bay-Atikokan), more than 850 party members will be eligible to cast ballots in the nomination race.
“Our membership has reached levels we have never seen before in this area,” said Barclay, the priest at St. Mary’s Anglican Church in Sioux Lookout.
She is married and has three grown children.
A nomination meeting is expected to be held sometime in early March to choose the candidate to run under the NDP banner.
Charles Fox, a regional aboriginal leader, is the only person so far seeking the Liberal nomination after MP Robert Nault bowed out of the race earlier this week.
No candidates have stepped forward yet to run for the new Conservative Party of Canada in the proposed Kenora riding.