Edmonton municipal politics Gibbs first sought elected office in the
1910 election, when he ran for alderman on the
Edmonton City Council. He finished ninth of eleven candidates, and was not elected (the top five were). He sought election again in
1914, when he was elected as a school trustee. He served a two-year term in this position, but did not seek re-election at its conclusion. In the
1924 election, Gibbs was elected as an alderman running on the
Labour slate, finishing fourth of eleven candidates. He finished first of twelve candidates in his
1926 re-election attempt, and was similarly re-elected in the
1928 (first of fourteen candidates),
1930 (second of twelve), and
1932 (first of fifteen) re-election attempts. While on city council, he participated in Labour's
de facto majority on council. (While Labour only had five aldermen - Gibbs,
L.S.C. Dineen,
James East,
Alfred Farmilo, and
James Findlay, a sixth,
Rice Sheppard had been elected as an independent labour candidate and was sympathetic to Labour's views). Lionel was still in office at the time of his death.
Provincial politics Gibbs sought provincial office as a member of the
Labour Party in the riding of
Edmonton during the
1926 provincial election. At the time, the riding had five seats, elected using a
single transferable vote electoral system. On the first count, he finished ninth of eighteen candidates. However, on subsequent counts the redistribution of votes from defeated and elected candidates made him the third of five MLAs elected. He was re-elected in the
1930 election. The Edmonton district was electing six in that election. He came in third of seventeen candidates on the first count. After vote transfers his vote total was more than enough to be elected. He was still an MLA at the time of his death in 1934. ==Death==