The readers of the Prince George Citizen spoke loud and clear in naming Shirley Bond as the 2013 newsmaker of the year in Prince George.
Bond captured 62 per cent of the votes, cast between Dec. 19 and 30, with Tracey Matters picking up 28 per cent. Andy Beesley received six per cent and Beth James took three per cent. The remaining percentage was divided between Terry Teegee and Matthew Church.
Even if the votes from her husband and local residents who worked on her campaign last spring weren't counted, Bond still would have won. Several people who cast votes for Bond said they don't like her politics or her party but they like her.
That's a common refrain heard across the community.
But this wasn't just a popularity contest. There were plenty of good reasons for Bond to be named newsmaker of the year.
Bond won a fourth term as an MLA from Prince George, the first time such a feat has been accomplished since Ray Williston did it during the 1950s and 1960s. Her longtime fellow MLA Pat Bell said she's known as "The General" in cabinet, not just because of her term as attorney general and solicitor general (the first woman and the first non-lawyer to hold those positions), but because of her leadership skills and her drive.
As her staff know all too well, she works hard, she works long hours and she expects the same devotion from those around her. It's not just her work ethic, however, that's earned her the loyalty of even those on the other side of the political fence. She's a master of the personal touch, from the handwritten thank you and Christmas cards to the regular posts on Twitter to the little details she remembers about the people she meets.
This past summer, she ran into former Citizen reporter Gordon Hoekstra, now with the Vancouver Sun, in downtown Prince George. She hugged him and congratulated him on his second Michener Award nomination. The compliment was impressive because usually the only people who care about newspaper awards are people who work at newspapers. It was also quite gracious because Hoekstra's award-winning stories for the Sun, in the wake of the deadly explosions of sawmills in Burns Lake and Prince George, forced the provincial Liberals to get more serious about inspecting mills for sawdust levels.
It's safe to say Hoekstra's colleague Vaughn Palmer doesn't get many hugs and warm greetings from sitting cabinet ministers.
Speaking of Palmer, he and all of his counterparts in Vancouver and Victoria, had written off the Liberals heading into the 2013 election. Palmer wrote in February, just three months before the vote, that the Liberals would only win 10 seats and only John Rustad from Nechako Lakes would hold onto his seat in the Central Interior.
What Palmer failed to recognize in his prediction that Bond would lose her seat was that her popularity in Prince George transcends her politics. Bond is the Prince George newsmaker of the year for 2013 in the same way that Christy Clark would have to be considered the runaway choice for the provincial newsmaker of 2013. Both women mounted powerful campaigns that worked the grassroots relentlessly and made their personal style part of their substance.
In his nomination for Bond as newsmaker of the year, Citizen associate news editor Rodney Venis called her "one of the foremost - and finest - politicians of any stripe this region has ever seen." For those familiar with how sharp Mr. Venis keeps his pen and for those local politicians who have been skewered by his acidic criticism in the past, that is high praise, indeed.
Bond's success as a politician is because she makes it personal, both for herself and her constituents. With all due respect to her past campaign managers, whether it was for school board or MLA, they had the easiest job in the world.
All they had to do was let Shirley be Shirley.
For an incredible election win in May, for her leadership at the provincial cabinet table and for just being herself in a political pressure cooker for so many years, Shirley Bond is Prince George's 2013 newsmaker of the year.
