Steinley shifts away from provincial to federal politics as writ drops

Driving through the Regina-Lewvan riding just a few hours after the writ dropped on Wednesday, massive signs showing support for Warren Steinley could already be seen getting tacked up on fences and pushed into lawns.

Steinley hit the ground at a sprint for his official campaign, having been door-knocking and meeting voters for more than a year ahead of time.

On Wednesday afternoon, Steinley was excited.

“We’ve been door-knocking for a fairly long time now, and we’re excited to continue to go out and meet people but also to get the signs up and show that we have a lot of support throughout the riding,” said Steinley.

His campaign office was fairly empty in the middle of the day but a large poster of Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer was up on the wall and already had about a dozen signatures on it.

Steinley said he’s having volunteers sign the poster when they come in, and he was thinking of sending a picture to Scheer to show him the support in the riding.

Steinley is running for the Conservative Party in the Regina-Lewvan riding, which won’t have an incumbent this time around. The NDP’s Erin Weir narrowly beat the Conservative candidate in the last election, but after being kicked out of the party, Weir announced he won’t be running again.

Steinley is a familiar face for much of Regina; he had represented the Regina-Walsh Acres riding in the provincial legislature since 2011. Steinley juggled his responsibilities as a MLA and his federal campaigning since his nomination in April 2018 until Wednesday. Shortly after the writ dropped Steinley officially tendered his resignation as an MLA.

He called serving as a MLA the “greatest honour of (his) working life so far,” but said now he’s putting his complete focus on campaigning. He said he has things all planned out for the campaign.

“We’ve reached out and talked to a lot of voters already and we have a plan in place of where we’re going to go and how we’re going to make sure that we reach the most amount of people in the next 38 days.”

Steinley said his campaign has put a big focus on getting out and talking to people directly. He said that’s the way you should do it if you’re asking for someone’s support. But it’s also going to be tough; Regina-Lewvan is one of the biggest ridings in the province.

“There’s about 40,000 households we want to get to and we’re going to try to get to as many as we can, but obviously that’s going to be the biggest challenge … reach as many voters as possible.”

The size of the campaign is a bit different for Steinley. He said he has a bigger campaign team now than in his provincial campaigns, to cover the wider ground.

Steinley is up against Winter Fedyk for the Liberal Party, Jigar Patel with the NDP, Naomi Hunter with the Green Party, Trevor Wowk with the People’s Party of Canada, and Ian Bridges with the National Citizens Alliance.