Dad 'would have been so proud' says Highland Council election victor
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THE new Ross-based councillor for Aird and Loch Ness said her father would be proud of her win.
Retired doctor Jean Davis pulled off the by-election victory on Friday taking the seat vacated by the SNP’s new MP Drew Hendry.
The 61-year-old emerged as the winner at the 4th and final stage of the count, gaining 1,511 votes leaving the SNP’s Emma Knox in her wake with 1,167 votes.
She said: “Yesterday would have been my dad’s hundredth birthday so that was voting day. He was the reason I was interested in politics because we used to debate when I was a teenager. I thought if I could win this it would really be a fitting thing for him.”
Her father lived south of the border in Lancashire and died in his seventies.
“He would have been so proud today,” she added.
“He would have been so happy about this. I’ve done it for him and I’ve done it for the Lib Dems as well in the aftermath of the tragedy of Charles Kennedy.”
Ms Davis retired from medical practice this year and works part-time at Inverness Cathedral doing their events management and administration.
She first stood as a General Election candidate for the Western Isles in 2005 and again in 2010.
She has pledged to give a voice to the many small communities that make up the ward.
“I want to listen to the people in the individual communities because they are very much individual communities here and see how I can help them deliver what’s important to them. Roads is a big one and it always has been. Anything from pot holes to major traffic problems but different people have different views in different areas.”
The Liberal Democrats are celebrating after winning the Highland Council seat. It is a big turn around for a party that straddled in fourth place in the last Highland Council election for the Aird and Loch Ness ward.
Inverness West Liberal Democrat councillor Alex Graham said the party’s renewed success was “a big blow” for the SNP.
“They SNP will be bitterly disappointed,” he said. “It’s a big blow to them that they failed to keep a seat they have represented since 2007. And it is not a good result for Drew Hendry MP that his party was unable to hold a seat that he vacated.”
Drew Hendry won the Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey seat at the General Election in May, ousting former Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander who had held the seat for a decade.
Mr Hendry overturned the 8,765 Liberal Democrat majority with his own majority of more than 10,000.
Party leader Willie Rennie, said it was the first time that the SNP have been beaten in a council by-election since the General Election “and it is the Scottish Liberal Democrats that have done it”.
“This result is a clear endorsement of localism over the SNP centralisation agenda. It looks like the gloss is starting to come off the SNP in the Highlands,” he said.
But Richard Laird, the party’s deputy in Highland, insisted it was still a strong performance.
He said had the Aird and Loch Ness by election been a normal election for four councillors, the SNP would have won two seats if the figures were translated into a full election.
“We’ve got nothing to be ashamed of,” he said.
