A Tale of Two Liberals: Joe Peschisolido in Steveston-Richmond East and Lawrence Woo in Richmond Centre

The moment Canadians had been waiting for arrived when polls began to close in St. John’s. With only a few of the early seats being called, Joe Peschisolido, candidate for Liberal MP of Steveston-Richmond East, was cautious—but given his friendly demeanour and all the hands he was shaking, very optimistic.

“I feel great, I think we’re going to form a majority government, we’ve been working hard, I feel truly honoured, humbled, and blessed to have so many wonderful people here, and we’ll see what happens tonight,” said Peschisolido just two hours before the polls in his riding closed.

The campaign office, a 10-minute walk from the KPU Richmond campus, was quiet around 5 p.m., but started to get busier and busier. Everyone in the room had a phone in one hand and a voter list in the other, and was scrambling to contact as many people as possible to remind them to vote.

Halfway across town, at Lawrence Woo’s campaign office on No. 3 Rd and Williams, a small crowd was starting to pack into a tight office which was covered in as many Chinese posters as English ones. The age distribution seemed to be wide, with just as many young as old.

Woo said that he was “cautiously optimistic,” and he seemed to be aware of pundits calling his riding a close one.

“I guess it’s going to be very close. Hopefully we’ll come out on top, but you know, we’ve still got half an hour to go [to polls closing]. You never know what’s going to happen—I don’t know if you can believe the polls or not,” said Woo. He was also happy about higher voter turnout at advance polls, but didn’t think it was a matter of “left or right” and had more to do with a desire for change.

As the clock ticked close to 7 p.m., volunteers got off of their phones and moved to the centre of the room, where a television showing the CBC election coverage was set up. The crowd of Liberal supporters was happy to see Atlantic Canada going Liberal, but most were aware that it was typical for the Liberal party.

Yet as the night went on, it became more and more clear that the Liberals were doing well, and when CBC called a Liberal majority, the room erupted in applause and cheers. “169, yes, I think a maj- 170, we got it!” shouted Woo, the rest of the room clapping. “Oh yes, I hope that I can get in there and join the party.”

Everyone was riding high with the national result. They only had to wait to find out how Woo did.

When 9 p.m. rolled around, someone noticed “Lawrence Woo leads Alice Wong in Richmond Centre” show up on the television, to which the crowd again erupted in applause. Woo smiled, but didn’t show as much excitement as everyone else. He was still “cautiously optimistic.”

While his colleague, Joe Peschisolido, had now been elected in Steveston-Richmond East with a clear 3,000 vote lead, Woo was only leading by 400 votes, and only 70 per cent of polls had reported. Still too close to call.

Local Chinese media started to show up, such as Omni and Fairchild. CKNW, Richmond News, and other radio reporters were present, as well as a reporter from Langara’s student journalism program. Woo found himself conducting interviews in three languages.

Around 10 p.m., 170 of the 177 polls had reported results, with Alice Wong, the Conservative incumbent, leading by 200 votes. Woo, with some of his volunteers and officers, went behind a closed door to check the reported vote counts from the various polling stations.

When all polling stations had reported, Alice Wong emerged with a considerable lead. Woo went in front of cameras and microphones, hours after Trudeau had given his own speech, to express his thoughts. “In a way, it’s a win-win situation for everybody. So, for the voters, for the volunteers in both camps, I truly congratulate them. This is an exercise we should all be proud of.”

One reporter asked Woo if he believed the Liberal party position on marijuana hurt his local campaign. “I think it was rather unfortunate. There should be more issues that we should be aware of than marijuana. To the majority of people in this country it’s a non-issue, but to some of us in the Chinese community, probably this was the number one issue. I think that contributed to part of our problems and that was unfortunate,” says Woo.

Woo isn’t sure if he’s going to run again, too early to tell. Regardless, democracy had been done tonight.