Thompson NDP MLA’s successful provincial election campaign cost less than $13,000

Thompson NDP MLA Danielle Adams got more bang for her buck in her successful campaign for the Sept. 10 provincial election than her main rival Kelly Bindle of the Progressive Conservative party, who represented the electoral division for one term beginning in 2016, election finance documents show.

Adams’s total expenditures for the campaign were $12,995.01, about 35 per cent as much as the $36,662.65 that Bindle spent. 

Bindle’s 1,757 votes were about two-thirds as many as the 2,686 that Adams received.

Adams’s biggest expenses were office supplies and postage ($2,900.34), promotional items like posters and pamphlets ($2,609.61) and signs and structural supports (2,344.81). She didn’t report any individual donations below or above $250 apiece, though she did receive $7,205.37 from the party’s constituency association and $6,229.20 from the NDP party.

Bindle spent $8,214.11 on advertising, $8,015 on salaries and $6,326.36 on promotional items. He received $2,900 in donations over $250 apiece from five donors, with the largest contributing $1,000. He also received $900 from individual donations less than $250 apiece, $6,808 from the constituency association and $27,197.28 from the PC party, $15,000 of it in cash and the remainder in property or services.

Green party candidate Meagan Jemmett, who received 298 votes, and Liberal candidate Darla Contois, who received 183 votes, did not spend any money on their campaigns.