When Lorne Calvert called the Saskatchewan election, he said it might well be the toughest battle the NDP or its predecessor, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, had ever faced.
Mr. Calvert began the campaign by invoking the party's glory days under Tommy Douglas, who was elected to five terms and remained in power from 1944 to 1964.
But Mr. Calvert found himself battling to win a fifth mandate for the New Democrats and keep the premier's job.
"We are in the fight of our lives," he told supporters during the 28-day campaign. "Today is the call to action."
It was a far cry from six years ago when Mr. Calvert defied expectations and made a dramatic political comeback after a two-year break to win the party leadership.
At the time, he made what might have seemed like an odd comment for someone seeking such a high-profile job.
"I said to those who were encouraging me to (run), 'If this means that I would not be able to go Canadian Tire on a Saturday morning, I don't want this job,"' Mr. Calvert recalled in a recent interview.
He went on to replace Roy Romanow as premier but still takes pride in being able to slip out to the hardware store by himself or with Betty, his wife of more than 30 years.
"I see more of the premiers of Canada now - everywhere they go they've got security. No matter where they are there's security. I've always wanted to be in a position where that wasn't part of the job, and it isn't part of the job today in Saskatchewan."
Mr. Calvert's road to the legislature started in Moose Jaw, where he was born in 1952.
He studied economics at the University of Regina and theology at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon before being ordained in the United Church of Canada in 1976. Mr. Calvert was minister of Zion United Church in Moose Jaw before making the leap to politics.
In 1986 Calvert was elected in Moose Jaw South, but it hasn't always been a smooth trip. In the late '90s, he resigned his seat in the legislature when he learned his 17-year-old son's girlfriend was pregnant. He took a break from politics to spend more time with his family, but returned two years later to seek the leadership of the NDP.
On Feb. 8, 2001, he assumed the duties of premier, taking over from Mr. Romanow.
Mr. Calvert led the NDP to a majority in the 2003 general election, taking 30 seats in the legislature over the Saskatchewan Party's 28 seats.
After more than 20 years in the world of politics, Mr. Calvert, 54, said he's learned what's really important.
"While there's much in life that's different because you're doing this work, there are good chunks of life that are still life," he said. "If you do not have a foot somewhere in real life, it becomes very easy, I think, to lose the sense of where people are really at."
For Mr. Calvert, that world consists of working with his hands, whether it's playing the piano, cutting the grass, building a deck with his son or spending time with his grandchildren.
"I'm not premier there, I'm just Dad. Sometimes I'm premier when they want to tell me what's going on in the real world, my daughter in particular," he said.
"They're a very important part of links to a world that's a long way from the legislature."
His seven-year-old grandson, Levi, however, has apparently caught on to the fact Grandpa has a different job.
"Once in a while he'll call me premier," Mr. Calvert laughs. "He thinks that's another name for a grandpa. This summer he was saying, 'My teacher said she wants you to come to our class.' He doesn't quite know why. Why would she want grandpa to come to his class?"
And then, of course, there's Mr. Calvert's self-described "long-term love affair with buses."
"He would always buy these dilapidated old school buses and then retrofit them as a camper," said Brian Walton, a long-time friend who met Mr. Calvert in 1974 when the two were studying at the University of Saskatchewan.
"Inevitably they crashed or had mechanical problems on the side of a mountain or at the entrance to a trailer park," laughed Mr. Walton. "We'd just shake our head and say, 'There goes Lorne.'
"The amount of money it took to repair these things - I think over the years he could have easily bought himself a pretty nice motorhome, but that's just not his style."
A few years back, Mr. Calvert found himself fixing his own campaign bus when it broke down on the side of the road.
The bus relationship started when he and Betty were first married. The couple couldn't afford to buy a fifth-wheel trailer, so Mr. Calvert turned an old 1956 school bus into a camper.
He finally reached his goal of buying a 1963 highway bus, but the duties of premier took up a lot of time.
"So I kind of sadly sold that fella, but some day, some day I'd love to convert another bus."
It's that down-to-earth folksiness that the general public probably doesn't expect from Mr. Calvert, said Mr. Walton.
"I've often said to other people ... when you really get to meet him, he is just such an ordinary guy with no pretensions and he really wants to do what is pragmatically best for people and for the province."