Double trouble in Fredericton as 2 party leaders face side-by-side races

New Brunswick's new election map has two major party leaders facing uncertainty in their own races to return to the legislature as MLAs.

An imaginary line that runs down Regent Street is the boundary between two Fredericton ridings where Liberal Leader Susan Holt and Green Leader David Coon are on the ballot.

Both leaders have faced the dilemma of weighing how much time to spend campaigning at home when the demands of province-wide campaigns require them to be on the road.

"It's always a bit of debate internally," said federal Green Leader Elizabeth May, who campaigned with Coon at St. Thomas University this week.

May said during federal elections she tries to spend at least half the campaign in her British Columbia riding. 

"It's always a strategic call, a judgment call. You can get it wrong," she said.

Coon and Holt have both devoted some time to local campaigning, but not as much as non-leaders can.

At Holt's riding headquarters, a squad of volunteers, mostly women, have been working phones and mapping their door-knocking routes while she's been touring the province.

"She trusts us to be her representatives," said Jackie Durnford, Holt's campaign manager in Fredericton South-Silverwood.

The spectacle of two party leaders contesting local races side-by-side was created by the redrawn electoral map.

Provincial law requires it be updated every 10 years to ensure each of the 49 ridings are roughly equal in population.

In Fredericton, the independent commission overseeing the process split the former Fredericton South riding that Coon had represented since 2014. He won big majorities there in 2018 and 2020.

Now that strong Green voting base is split in two — and could be diluted in the two new ridings on the new map.

Coon is running in Fredericton-Lincoln, which, based on results from 2020 polling stations, would have gone PC in that election.