'Damn! It feels good': Glover on Saint Boniface victory

A 20-year Liberal dynasty fell in Saint Boniface Tuesday night as Conservative Shelly Glover defeated Liberal incumbent Raymond Simard.

"I am so proud, so proud at this moment. I never realized it would feel this good, but damn! It feels good," Glover said to cheers in her campaign headquarters Tuesday night.

Glover, a bilingual Winnipeg police officer, ended two decades of Liberal representation in the southeast Winnipeg riding, which includes the city's French quarter. She won by a comfortable margin of more than 4,700 votes.

"I want to remind you why I did this: this is for victims across this country who have never gotten justice in this country until today," she said.

For 19 years, she's been enforcing the laws, she said; as an MP she'll have a new role.

"I would like to do my very best to change laws so that we can really reflect the needs of the victims and the needs of our community," she said.

Glover said she will take a leave of absence from her police job, she said, but when her time in Ottawa is over, she wants to return to the service. She gave a nod to her former colleagues in her victory speech.

"I see police officers in this crowd who have dedicated their lives and have risked their lives for others," she said. "They've taken it on the chin many, many times in our city, and that has got to stop."

Thought it would be a close race: Simard

Glover had campaigned hard in the riding for more than two years to defeat Simard, the Liberal incumbent who had represented the area for six years and was chair of the party's Manitoba caucus.

"You know, when you're knocking on doors and in people's faces for 2½  years, it certainly has an impact, while we're in Ottawa, doing our jobs," Simard said of the loss. 

"I knew it would be difficult, but we certainly thought it would be a very close race. So whether we saw it coming or not — I just thought it could have gone either way," he said.

Simard, 50, said he's not sure what he will do next. Before taking office in 2002, he worked as a businessman and co-owned a consulting firm.

The Saint Boniface loss was one of two for the Liberals in Manitoba Tuesday night; Tina Keeper also lost her Liberal seat in Churchill to the NDP's Niki Ashton, leaving Winnipeg South Centre's Anita Neville as the lone Liberal in the province.

Nationally, the Conservatives were elected in 143 ridings, up from 127 in 2006, while the Liberals were elected in 76, a drop of 19 seats from the party's standing at dissolution.