Four years ago, Shirley Bond was a goner.
She was running for her fourth consecutive term as an MLA, a feat accomplished just once before by a Prince George MLA. The B.C. Liberals were dead ducks in the polls and change seemed to be in the air. The Vancouver Sun's Vaughn Palmer was predicting the Liberals would win just 10 seats in the 2013 election. John Rustad in Nechako Lakes would be the sole Liberal survivor in these parts, his crystal ball told him.
Bond proved the pundits wrong.
As usual.
She picked up 11,291 votes or 57 per cent of the votes cast in Prince George-Valemount, eclipsing the 9,072 votes she received in 2009.
Citizen readers also chose her as their overwhelming choice for 2013 newsmaker of the year.
This past June marked the 15th consecutive year the Prince George-Valemount MLA has sat in cabinet. Only a handful of her colleagues - Linda Reid, Mike de Jong, Rich Coleman - have been in the Liberal caucus longer than she has.
Last Friday, she announced she was going to run next May for her fifth term. Only Ray Williston, who carried the Fort George riding six times for Social Credit from 1953 through 1972, has represented local residents in Victoria longer.
"I think there's one thing that people would say about me - and people are going to choose which direction they're going to go politically - but very few people argue with my work ethic," she told The Citizen a month before the 2013 election.
That statement is as true now as it was then. Bond is the rare politician that seems to grow more, not less, popular with her years in office. Even individuals who can't stand the B.C. Liberals and dislike Christy Clark have no problem casting votes for Bond, it seems.
The work ethic, along with excellent public speaking and media relations skills, a relentless social media presence and that common touch, has made Bond all but untouchable in her riding.
Bobby Deepak, who ran for the NDP against Mike Morris in the Prince George-Mackenzie riding in 2013, tweeted Tuesday that the search is well underway for NDP candidates in the two Prince George ridings.
Whoever the NDP choose to challenge Bond will be facing a political juggernaut who wins by increasingly larger margins with each election.
Prince George and Kamloops have historically been bellwether cities, where voters throw their support behind the winning party.
Bond has single-handedly altered that trend.
If anything, should the Liberals go down in 2017 to the kind of defeat Palmer predicted in 2013, Bond would likely be one of the last Liberals standing, not because she's a Liberal but because of her name and her reputation.
During her 15 years in office, Bond has avoided partisan mudslinging.
Her fellow Liberal MLAs adore her and admire her, while the NDP caucus respects her for her fairness and her courtesy.
Pat Bell had no problem publicly slamming the NDP and anyone else with the nerve to disagree with the B.C. Liberal platform.
Bond has consistently stayed above the fray, choosing to say little if she had nothing good to say. When she has been publicly critical, she poked, rather than stabbed, her voice was calm, not angry, and her target was principle, not people.
The companion to that kindler, gentler approach is fierce resolve and a competitive streak. At a 2013 all-candidates forum hosted by The Citizen, CKPG and UNBC, the NDP's Sherry Ogasawara was nowhere to be found five minutes before the forum was scheduled to begin.
Bond was firmly adamant that the event should start on time, with or without Ogasawara, who arrived with two minutes to spare.
Bond may be a few credits shy of that political science degree from UNBC she started working on so many years ago but she's written her own textbook on political longevity during her years in office and after she finally retires from politics, UNBC likely has an honourary doctorate ready to bestow upon her.
She is not merely a survivor, she's a proven winner, going back to the 1990s and her days as a school board trustee.
Barring a political disaster of epic proportions, Bond is Prince George-Valemount's MLA for as long as she wants to be.
-- Managing editor Neil Godbout
