Economy, environment will be key factors in next weeks election

Local voters will head to the polls Tuesday in a four-way race that will see Liberal incumbent Dominic LeBlanc defending his seat against Conservative candidate Omer Leger, NDP's Chris Durrant and the Green Party's Mike Milligan.
This will be LeBlanc's fourth run as Beausejour's MP, a title he has retained since 2000 -- the year in which he defeated Conservative opponent Angela Vautour (who had bested him in the 1997 race).
And while Durrant and Milligan are both newcomers to the political arena, this is Leger's third time running federally and he also served a 12-year stint provincially under Richard Hatfield's government.
But despite Leger's experience, Durrant's popularity as a university student, and Milligan's down-to-earth approach, LeBlanc is not likely to fall to defeat in the Oct. 14 election, according to Mount Allison University political science professor Geoff Martin.
"I feel like here in Beausejour, I don't see any big upheaval coming," said Martin. "I don't feel any type of groundswell out there and often you can . . . usually there are all kinds of signs."
Beausejour, a riding that stretches from Sackville to St. Louis and includes more than 61,000 electorates, has only swung their votes away from the Liberals once since 1930, when NDP candidate Angela Vautour defeated LeBlanc in 1997 by less than 2,000 votes. He came back three years later to win the election after Vautour's floor-crossing made electors see "red."
Since that time, LeBlanc has continued to dominate his opponents, gaining more than 53 per cent of the vote in the 2004 election and 47 per cent in '06.
"I think Dominic LeBlanc is a strong incumbent, is well known and is fairly popular among people," said Martin. "And I didn't see the opposition campaigns as being all that active or gaining traction or really taking off."
And although Beausejour may be a safe seat, Martin said it seems there may be at least two New Brunswick ridings in question this election - Moncton and Fredericton - as Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Liberal leader Stephane Dion's quick visits this past weekend to the Atlantic region may indicate.
But that's not where the two leaders have been focusing most of their election campaigns, and for very good reason.
"It's been a pretty low-key campaign in these parts and it's pretty clear the action is in Quebec, B.C. and to some extent Ontario. That looks like that's where the election will be decided."
How the votes will shake out come next Tuesday is the big question on everyone's minds, said Martin, and that will be largely dependent on whether the Liberals can earn enough confidence from voters to keep their votes from straying in other directions.
Martin said voters' reaction to Dion's carbon tax plan will likely play a role in how they will mark their ballots next week but so too will the current economic downturn.
Due to our press deadline, next Tuesday's federal election results will not be available in the Oct. 15 issue of the Sackville Tribune-Post. Check out www.sackvilletribunepost.com for local results and the Oct. 22 edition for full election coverage.