Sarah Fowler, a councillor for the Village of Tahsis, has thrown her name in to be the federal NDP candidate in the 2025 federal election.
Fowler said that she decided to run after hearing that incumbent Rachel Blaney would not be seeking re-election.
"I already serve in public office, so I see this as a potential way to expand my services," Fowler said. "Politics is about windows of opportunity."
Fowler has been an elected official for six years in Tahsis, and has worked as a staffer in the Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration in Ottawa.
"I've always been political," she said. "I do think of myself as somebody who can work across party lines and is able to find common ground. That's something that's needed now."
As part of her work as an elected official, Fowler has been involved in the Union of British Columbia Municipalities' as a small community representative.
"The cumulative population of the 42 villages with less than 2,500 people is 44,000," she said. "That's what I've been focused on for the past four years: the Davids, not the Goliaths."
"They're the ones who don't really have a lot of taxation properties, so that's what I've been focused on for the last little while," she continued. "I was a small community rep when Lytton burned down, and I do feel responsibile for learning about some of the realities in the spots far off the beaten track."
She said that "off the beaten track" describes the riding pretty accurately.
"It's a large riding, there are almost 80,000 residents and it's geographically spaced out," she said. "There are a lot of post-resource towns that are trying to find a new way to exist in modern economies ... there are a lot of success stories across the riding of creative solutions."
The NDP candidate election is for party members only. People who register to be a member before July 16 are elligible to vote in the election, which takes place on Aug. 31.
