NDP has sixth leadership candidate
Posted January 17, 2011 6:14 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – The NDP’s Adrian Dix received a rockstar-welcome from supporters at Guy Carleton elementary, where he has just launched his campaign for the leadership of the provincial NDP.
The entire room erupted into applause, and shouted ‘Adrian Dix, Adrian Dix’ as the MLA greeted the crowd.
Several MLAs and MPs were in the room, including Vancouver-Kingsway MP Don Davies and Vancouver-East MP Libby Davies. Supporters held signs reading “Leadership, energy and trust.”
Dix says he’s running for three particular reasons: to outright get rid of the HST, to raise the minimum wage, and to launch environmental projects.
In his address Monday evening, he gave a nod to outgoing leader Carole James, saying she did the best she could, and was behind her the entire time she held the position. He says if he’s elected as leader, he will do his best to unite the party.
Dix was former Premier Glen Clark’s chief of staff, and infamously backdated a memo during the Casinogate controversy.
Political blogger Sean Holman with Public Eye Online says this is something Dix certainly doesn’t want to come up too much during his campaign.
He says Dix has acknowledged that that was a mistake eleven years ago.
So will it come back to bite him despite all that? Holman says absolutely.
“We’re talking about it now, so this will be an issue in the campaign and he’ll have to run a pretty squeeky clean operation lest those kind of stories come back and to continue to haunt him.”
As far as any more NDP candidates, Holman feels this is it.
“You know it’s going to be a race between Mike Farnworth, Adrian Dix with John Horgan and Harry Lali also making a contribution. We’ll see how it all plays out.”
