B.C. gets new premier, Liberals elect new leader
Posted February 26, 2011 7:20 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VICTORIA – By the end of the day, British Columbians should know who will be their new premier.
B.C. Liberal Party members will be casting their votes today for a new party leader to succeed outgoing Premier Gordon Campbell.
Four leadership candidates, all with close ties to Campbell, are on the ballot.
Christy Clark, a former deputy premier who left politics in 2004, is considered the front-runner, trumpeting herself as a much-needed injection of new blood for the B.C. Liberal Party.
But a complicated preferential ballot and a weighted vote for rural ridings has led some pundits to speculate that former cabinet ministers Kevin Falcon or George Abbott could sneak ahead of Clark on the second round.
Falcon, the closest to Campbell on the political spectrum, has won huge business support throughout his campaign and the former health and transportation minister says, like Campbell, he is results-oriented and willing to embrace bold ideas.
Abbott, a former berry farmer and four-term MLA, has built widespread support from within the Liberal caucus and cabinet and secured the backing of two of the campaign’s drop-out candidates, rookie cabinet minister Moira Stilwell and former Parksville mayor Ed Mayne.
Former attorney general Mike de Jong, an elected Liberal since 1994, spent the campaign travelling throughout the province on his Open Mike tour.
De Jong says he’s a commonsense conservative who favours balancing the budget before cutting taxes or embarking on spending sprees.
Campbell leaves the Liberals after 17 years as leader and three consecutive election, wins that kept him in the premier’s office for a decade.
Hamish Telford, a professor of political science at the University of the Fraser Valley, said the four candidates are all graduates of the Campbell school of politics, which includes free-market economics, policy-driven initiatives and good relations with other governments, especially Ottawa.
“They’ve all proclaimed to have learned from Mr. Campbell’s managerial style and they’ve all professed to do better,” he said. “Time will tell if that is exactly the case.”
The process to elect the new leader and premier includes the weighted vote count and a preferential ballot that allows party members to rank at least their first and second choices for the new leader.
Liberals voted overwhelmingly earlier this month to endorse the weighted ballot, which gives each of the province’s 85 ridings 100 points no matter how many Liberal members are in the riding. The weighted ballot was endorsed to ensure the race does not become a contest over who signs up the most members in the heavily populated Vancouver-area ridings.
The candidate who first receives 50 per cent plus one of the 8,500 available points 4,251 is the magic number is declared the winner.
If a winner is not declared after the first vote count, the fourth place finisher is dropped from the ballot and that candidate’s second-choice votes go to the three remaining candidates. Vote counts will continue until one candidate crosses the 50-per-cent plateau.
In the days leading up to the vote, the Liberal Party was attempting to deal with concerns that some rural candidates had not received their official online voting instructions, threatening their participation in the election. Executive director Chad Pederson said Friday the party had taken steps to contact affected members in the Peace Region and northern Vancouver Island. He said there’s no plans to extend Saturday’s voting hours.
“We’re pleased at this point with the fact that we’ve been able to reach out to a lot of members to be able to issue their PINS in the areas of most concern,” he said, “and that we’ve set up mechanisms to make sure that everyone who wants an eligibility to vote … can.”
By late Friday, the party had also installed a special online portal allowing members to “instantly obtain” their code by entering a registered phone number. After doing so, the member was to to be instantly called with their PIN.
