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Kitchen earns Conservative nod

It took four rounds of vote tabulation, but when the nominee dust settled, Dr. Robert Kitchen emerged as the successful nominee who will carry the Souris-Moose Mountain constituency’s Conservative Party banner into the next federal campaign.
Robert Kitchen
Robert Kitchen

It took four rounds of vote tabulation, but when the nominee dust settled, Dr. Robert Kitchen emerged as the successful nominee who will carry the Souris-Moose Mountain constituency’s Conservative Party banner into the next federal campaign.

The call for nominees attracted a total of six hopefuls who expressed a desire to represent the riding with the impending retirement of current MP Ed Komarnicki.

The nomination convention forums and votes were conducted in Kipling on Friday evening, and in Weyburn and Estevan on Saturday morning and afternoon, with the vote tabulation following immediately after. The tabulation ultimately ended with Kitchen being declared as the nominee with the most votes cast in his favour by Conservative Party members in the sprawling riding that covers all of southeast Saskatchewan.

“I’m just getting my feet on the ground and realizing it’s a whole new game and a learning opportunity,” said Kitchen when contacted on Monday to comment on the outcome.

The Estevan-based chiropractor, who operates a clinic in partnership with two other practitioners, will be making adjustments to his personal schedule but assured patients and clients, the clinic will continue to operate as usual.

“Ed is still the MP, that is the certainty. I’m just the candidate and I hope I can consult with him, learn more about the constituency so I can take that into the campaign,” he said, referring to the expected federal election planned for October, 2015.

“I’m just going to be taking little steps here at first,” he said.

Calven Johnson, president of the Conservative’s Souris-Moose Mountain Riding Association, said party members cast 98 votes in Kipling, 142 in Weyburn and 455 in Estevan. He said the group was quite pleased with the total, even though there was a thinner than expected turnout in Weyburn.

After the official delegates/members cast their ballots using a system that asked them to list candidate preferences (one through six), the vote counting began.

Johnson said that in compliance with long-standing rules regarding candidate selections, the final vote count would not be made public, but noted, it did require a full four rounds before Kitchen surfaced with the 50 plus one per cent margin with another Estevan-based nominee, Lori Carr being the last candidate standing in the way. The other hopefuls included Phillip Zajac, also from Estevan; Randy Schiller from Weyburn; Mike Strachan of Torquay and Lyndon Dayman from Windthorst.

The media was banned from the forum and the candidate presentations, as well as the voting process. Kitchen said the message he delivered during the forum, was one that compared what he already does in his business, to what he sees would be his duties as a candidate and hopefully, as an MP.

“I listen and hear what they’re saying, do some research, form an action plan and follow through,” he said. “The seat belongs to the constituents, I hope they come forward and get involved and if I can win the seat for the party, their voice will resonate.”

Although it was too early to confirm any kind of campaign team composition, Kitchen said he and his backers “made a lot of friends” among the other nominees and their teams, despite the fact they were opposing him in the nomination process.

“We were all seeking the nomination. So, I have some ideas in the back of my mind that we can maybe get them involved. The next level of campaigning will be much different with people saying different things,” he said.

So far, none of the other major parties have surfaced with any notice of candidate selection processes.

“Robert was one of our constituency directors and Ed is, too. Robert represented us at the party’s convention in Calgary. He’s on a grand learning curve now. I believe there is an orientation workshop in Ottawa he can attend in the future and I expect he’ll be invited to shadow Ed on occasion, let him mentor him on some issues, as we get closer to an actual campaign date,” said Johnson.

With regards to the media being shut out of the process, the party’s national office communication spokesman, Cory Hann, said all nomination forums and votes across the country are being handled that way. He admitted they have no direct control over unofficial twitter, texts or postings coming from delegates during the process, but felt the public consuming the unofficial messages, would be able to “be realistic,” about what was being passed off as information. The banning of media, he said, “is part of the party’s documentation in the list of nomination rules and procedures and that would be a standard followed across the country.”

Kitchen, who has been in a practice in Estevan for over 25 years, is married and he and his wife Donna have three grown children. He said in an earlier interview, when he was the first candidate to step forward, that he has harboured an interest in politics since his university days. Growing up in a military family in such locales as Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan and other Middle East countries as well as England and the United States, he said he gained fresh perspectives on how governance can be so different due to the social and political climates in each region.

As a past president and registrar with the Canadian Federation of Chiropractors, he has gained additional experience in management and leadership.

The Conservatives have held a stranglehold on the Souris-Moose Mountain constituency since it was formed in 1987. The territory, now expanded slightly under a new boundary configuration, has gone Conservative or Reform (prior to the amalgamation of the parties) by overwhelming margins with the exception of one term when Liberal Bernie Collins interrupted the flow, before it was returned to Conservatives in the last four federal elections.