Long active in the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), Junkin was elected to Magherafelt District Council at the 1981 Northern Ireland local elections,[1] and held a seat in Moyola in 1985, 1989 and 1993.
[2][3] By the start of the 1990s, he was a Vice-President of the UUP, serving alongside Ken Maginnis, Martin Smyth and Hazel Bradford.
[4] Junkin was elected to the Northern Ireland Forum in 1996, representing Mid Ulster,[5] and held his council seat in 1997,[3] but lost out in the 1998 Northern Ireland Assembly election, to fellow party member Billy Armstrong.
[6] Although Junkin was re-elected to Magherafelt Council in 2001, he then resigned from the UUP and stood as an independent in 2005.
[7] He subsequently left politics, but hit the local news in 2007 after a boat which he had fitted out for the use of an autistic child was destroyed by arson.