Hey Orazietti - Arbus will be watching you (7 photos)

Orange balloons, coffee and sandwiches greeted NDP supporters last night at the Windsor Park ballroom as party faithful eagerly awaited provincial election results.

Sault MP Tony Martin was there too, joining the campaigners with eyes transfixed on CTV's election coverage.

Unfortunately, there wasn't much to party about.

Liberal incumbent David Orazietti led from the very first poll results, ending with an unofficial 19,313 votes (60.2 percent), compared to just 8,474 (26.4 percent) for Arbus, 2,329 (7.3 percent) for PC Josh Pringle, 1,386 (4.3 percent) for Andre Riopel of the Green Party, and 605 votes (1.9 percent) for Family Coalition candidate Bill Murphy.

There were 57,907 eligible voters in the riding,

Of those, just 32,107 (55.5 percent) cast ballots.

Some pollsters had showed Arbus close enough to Orazietti to snatch away a last-hour victory from the popular Liberal MPP.

Jack Layton, the federal NDP leader and Howard Hampton, the provincial leader, both were in the Sault on the eve of the election to blitz the riding.

And Arbus was tirelessly knocking on doors all day yesterday.

"Pulling the vote" on polling day is regarded as a local NDP specialty.

But this day, it all went for naught.

Put bluntly, Arbus got himself whumped.

Royally.

Hardly an hour after the polls had closed, the Sault College professor had gone up the street to the Liberal war room to offer his congratulations to Orazietti for winning a second term as the Sault's MPP.

Then, a visibly exhausted Arbus dragged his sorry ashbag down to the Windsor Park, where he was received with a standing ovation.

Surrounded by his family, he wasted no time in addressing the audience.

"Tonight we have seen democracy in action. That's what an election is all about. It makes me proud to live in Canada, but you make me proud to be a New Democrat."

As for Orazietti, Arbus added: "I hope he represents all citizens of Sault Ste. Marie with equal energy and skill. I'll certainly be watching. You can count on that."

Arbus continued by congratulating Progressive Conservative Candidate Josh Pringle, Family Coalition Candidate Bill Murphy and Green Party Candidate Andre Riopel.

"They raised important issues and I know the campaign was made more interesting by their participation."

Turning to Tony Martin, Arbus said: "Your words of wisdom helped me so often I lost count.... You're a great representative, Tony, and a person I'm honoured to know. Thank you for being who you are and all you do for the Sault."

Arbus then went on to explain the importance of the NDP and that it may be down, but it's not out.

"We never lost sight of our vision and maybe that's the thing I'm most proud of of all. We stuck to our agenda. We made it count. We did what we set out to do. We didn't waiver from our message to the community. We talked about issues no other party wanted to talk about. We stood up for the people of this community, especially the most vulnerable. That's the NDP tradition. I'm proud that we stayed focused on that as New Democrats.

"The community made a different choice but because of the NDP and this campaign, they have a choice to make. We will not go away. We will not lose sight of our goals and over the next four years, we will continue to press the issues that matter to working people, to seniors, to children. We'll continue to press those issues here, across the province and in the legislature."

After some words of encouragement and a few more thank you's, Arbus concluded his short speech with the simple and profound utterance: "I wanna have a beer."