New N.S. Liberal leader says party must ‘run a better campaign’ to win next election

Zach Churchill won the Nova Scotia Liberal leadership with 65 per cent of the vote over Angela Simmonds, about a year after the party was defeated in the last election.

The Nova Scotia Liberal Party’s newly-elected leader says they’ll have to “run a better campaign” to win the next provincial election in three years and reclaim their spot as the governing party.

“We have to have strong organizations in every single riding across the province, and we have to engage the Conservatives on the health care question,” Zach Churchill told Global News Morning on Monday.

“And that’s not something that I think we did in the last campaign.”

Despite entering the month-long campaign with a big lead in the polls and momentum from their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Liberals suffered a crushing defeat to the Progressive Conservatives led by Tim Houston last August.

The PCs won 31 ridings in the newly-expanded 55-seat legislature.

Iain Rankin, who was only premier for six months, stepped down as Liberal leader in January of this year.

Over the weekend, Churchill won the Liberal leadership with 65 per cent of the vote over Angela Simmonds — the MLA for Preston and a deputy speaker.

Churchill is from Yarmouth and first joined the legislature in a 2010 byelection. He has served as a cabinet minister for the departments of education and health.