Vaughn Palmer: B.C. Liberals open nominations in key battleground ridings
Credit to Author: Hugh Dawson| Date: Tue, 03 Dec 2019 01:23:37 +0000
VICTORIA — The B.C. Liberals have cleared the way to nominate candidates for the next election in the ridings held by Speaker Darryl Plecas, Green leader Andrew Weaver, and nine incumbent New Democrats.
The move means that would-be candidates can file letters of intent, setting in motion what is billed as a “rigorous” vetting process to weed out potential embarrassments before the next election.
The announcement from Liberal headquarters said the first 11 ridings were chosen by the party brass in consultation with local constituency associations.
High on the list was Abbotsford South, which Plecas won for the Liberals in 2017 before he accepted the NDP’s invitation to serve as Speaker.
Plecas, who now sits as an independent, has indicated he does not plan to run again in 2021, although that could be a feint to throw off the Liberals.
The Liberals are also eyeing Oak Bay-Gordon Head, where Green leader Andrew Weaver intends to retire after two terms as MLA. Before Weaver was elected in 2013, Oak Bay had been in the Liberal column for 17 years and four elections.
Also on the list is Courtenay-Comox, where the Liberals lost to the NDP in the last election by a mere 189 votes. The result cost then-Premier Christy Clark her legislative majority and set the stage for the New Democrats to take office in partnership with the Greens.
The Liberal list of prime targets includes five seats they lost to an NDP surge in Metro Vancouver: the two in Maple Ridge, plus North Vancouver-Lonsdale, Port Moody-Coquitlam, and Vancouver-Fraserview.
All were won by the New Democrats, with margins ranging from 325 votes to just under 2,000.
Rounding out the list are three seats where the government margin is solid: Mid Island-Pacific Rim, represented by Indigenous Relations Minister Scott Fraser; Vancouver-Fairview, held by Environment Minister George Heyman; and New Westminster, with Mental Health Minister Judy Darcy.
The Liberals are seeking to recruit candidates “from diverse backgrounds to increase representation of women, millennials, and other under-represented groups,” according to the party media release.
The party also “continues to welcome expressions of interest from all British Columbians who share the values of our broad free-enterprise coalition.”
The reference to the self-styled free-enterprise coalition is particularly relevant because the Liberals are facing a potentially messy nomination fight along the party’s political fault line.
The emerging battleground is Chilliwack, currently represented in the legislature by MLA John Martin.
Martin, a criminology professor and former media pundit, switched to the B.C. Liberals from the B.C. Conservatives prior to the 2013 election. He went on to win the Chilliwack seat with 48 per cent of the popular vote, and repeated the result in 2017.
But Martin now faces a challenge for renomination from Diane Janzen, a former city councillor and school board chair who is executive director of Chilliwack Community Services.
Although Chilliwack was not one of the ridings designated for the first wave of nominations, Janzen nevertheless announced her candidacy last month.
She has started selling memberships in anticipation that the riding will be included in the second wave of openings, expected in January.
“I look forward to rolling up my sleeves and working with residents, the business community, organizations, the city and the school board to move our city forward,” she told reporter Jennifer Feinberg of the Chilliwack Progress. “I think what they want to see is an inclusive party which is representative of Canada. I do think we should be reflecting that broad representation.”
Not commenting at this point — except to confirm he intends to run for re-election — is Martin.
Other Liberals have noted that he is the first of their incumbents to be challenged for renomination, and party leader Andrew Wilkinson has not moved to protect him.
Others have pointed out that challenger Janzen is a former member of the Liberal Party of Canada. She ran for the national party in the May 2011 election, finishing third with 11 per cent of the vote. Chilliwack is not prime turf for federal Liberals.
Despite that unimpressive result, Janzen announced in fall 2011 that she wanted to run for the B.C. Liberals in a byelection for the Chilliwack-Hope seat vacated by cabinet minister Barry Penner.
But she dropped out a month later, acknowledging that her run for the federal Liberals had become “a major distraction” to her candidacy for the provincial party.
It may become a distraction again, given what happened after she dropped out in 2011.
The B.C. Liberals then nominated Laurie Throness, who had strong ties to the federal Conservatives. But the upstart B.C. Conservatives nominated Martin as their candidate.
With Throness and Martin splitting the vote with 32 and 25 per cent respectively, the New Democrats went on to win the byelection with 42 per cent.
Throness was able to win back the seat for the Liberals in the provincial election a year later. His win came thanks in part to Martin, who quit the Conservatives and switched to the Liberals, running for them in the other Chilliwack riding that he now represents.
With the Liberals losing power in 2017, the foregoing would be little more than a footnote to the Christy Clark era.
But I expect B.C. Liberals in Chilliwack will be hearing more about that fractious slice of party history if Janzen, the former federal Liberal, persists in challenging Martin, the former B.C. Conservative.