Politics
At the age of 31, in the June 2004 federal election, Cullen was elected to his first term as a Member of Parliament. He had won the NDP nomination in the Skeena—Bulkley Valley riding three months earlier against a Prince Rupert social worker. In the general election, he challenged the Conservative incumbent Andy Burton, Liberal Miles Richardson who was chair of the B.C. Treaty Commission, Rod Taylor of the Christian Heritage Party, engineer and photographer Roger Benham of the Green Party and Marxist-Leninist Frank Martin. The election was seen as a tight three-way race between Burton, Richardson, and Cullen. Cullen made support of the federal moratorium on offshore oil and gas drilling part of his campaign and a magnitude 6.7 earthquake off the Queen Charlotte Islands during the campaign helped highlight Cullen's arguments. Cullen went on to defeat the Conservative incumbent Burton by a margin of 1,272 votes. In each subsequent federal election Cullen has increased his share of the popular vote from 37% in 2004, to 48% in 2006 and 49.6% in 2008. In 2011, Cullen was elected for a fourth term with 55% of all votes cast - the highest plurality in the riding since 1962.
The riding represented by Cullen - Skeena—Bulkley Valley - covers over 323,000 square kilometres of northwestern British Columbia, which is nearly the size of Norway. The largest urban areas in the riding are Prince Rupert, Terrace, Kitimat, and Smithers, with a population of approximately 12,000, 11,000, 9,000, and 5,500 people, respectively. The riding also includes Haida Gwaii, Hazelton, New Hazelton, Vanderhoof, Stewart, Port Edward, Houston and the villages of Masset, Burns Lake, Granisle, Telkwa and Port Clements. The region's economy is predominantly resource-based, especially fishing, forestry, and mining.
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