Longtime NDP member, former Sask NDP party president and candidate for office and party leader, Yens Pedersen, won the byelection in Regina Northeast yesterday to boost the number of Saskatchewan NDP MLAs to 13.
My first introduction to Pedersen was when he competed against Ryan Meili for Leader of the Saskatchewan NDP in 2009.
At the time, Ryan ended up placing second to the eventual winner, Dwain Lingenfelter, but both of the other contenders – MLA Deb Higgins and Yens Pedersen – threw their support behind Meili during the voting rounds and to this day, I often wonder how the Saskatchewan NDP might be different in terms of party renewal and revitalization if Meili had managed to pull off the upset.
I’m not going to wade into these dangerous waters too much but I think the generational divide you saw to a certain degree back in 2009 (Deb Higgins is a Millennial, right?) 😉 are still being fought today with the Erin Weir controversy as a proxy for the divergent views and approaches of two different generations as the Baby Boomers battle to maintain control and the Millennials strive to take more control (and as always, the Gen Xers look on in an ironically detached fashion while listening to Nirvana’s “Nevermind” album on repeat.) 🙂
Anyhow, here’s another picture to show the long history Pedersen and Meili have together – this one from a Ryan Meili book launch that was held at Regina Public Library in September 2012 when, if memory serves, Pedersen introduced Meili.
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