BY DANIEL SIMS
Special to the News
On August 28 it was announced that BC United Party would suspend its election campaign and encouraged supporters to vote for the BC Conservatives. One of the reasons given for this decision was to avoid splitting the vote and handing the election to the incumbent BC NDP. It was even promised that the BC Conservatives would review BC United candidates and potentially make them their candidate. In a certain sense this makes sense. John Rustad had been a member of the BC Liberal Party and in theory all these parties are small “c” conservative.
The reality has been far more complicated than that. Given that both the BC United and the BC Conservatives had already been preparing for the current election for a while, when the announcement was made there a number of candidates who suddenly found themselves without a party in the case of the BC United or replaced by another person in the case of the BC Conservatives.
And it was not just political hopefuls. Some sitting MLAs now found themselves without official party support. Had they just decided to accept their fate and backed the BC Conservative candidate there is a good chance that Kevin Falcon’s decision would have resulted in the outcome he desired. But many candidates simply decided to run as independents and honestly, why not? Vote splitting is a concern, but …
Running for election is in many ways the final step in becoming an elected official. First, you need to get selected as your party’s candidate in a riding. For smaller parties like Christian Heritage, or in ridings where another party is expected to receive an overwhelming number of votes, there might not be much competition, but this situation is often not the case. As a result, many candidates have to, in essence, get elected twice and in order to do so they generally form a cadre of supporters, including an inner circle of individuals who help them run their campaign. While in theory these individuals support the party, it must be remembered that they also support their candidate and in situations where the candidate is replaced and/or the party ceases to exist, the latter support may trump the former.This conflict is all the more true for incumbent candidates, like Coralee Oakes. Thrice elected as the MLA for Cariboo North, she has a track record and numerous connections to community. And while I am sure that like any elected official she has her haters, I also think she has a good chance to win in the upcoming election. Indeed, her biggest challenge might be that her riding now includes part of Prince George, where people do not know her as well. But of course we will see on election day.
And this possibility is perhaps the most interesting thing about this election. The demise of the BC United and the subsequent replacement of BC Conservative candidates by former BC United ones left a number of politicians and political hopefuls without a party to represent. But they did not disappear, and their supporters did not disappear. Nor were they necessarily happy about the move and/or willing to support the BC Conservative candidate. Indeed, retiring politician, Karin Kirkpatrick, was so upset that she decided to cancel her retirement to run as an independent. The end result is that we have 30 independent candidates this election.
Mind you, we had 24 independent candidates last election, but often independent candidates are fringe candidates. They do not have a party because they cannot find a party. And they often fare far worse than candidates for minor political parties. This election, however, the vast majority of these 30 independents had a party, their party simply ceased to run in the election or replaced them with someone else. Only time will tell if we elect the most independent candidates since the first political parties ran in provincial elections and it might not be a bad thing. While independents do not get party support, they are also not subject to the party whip and therefore can vote as they see fit. And if we elect a minority government with enough independents to keep the ruling party in power, they can get things passed that they might now have if they had remained in the BC Conservatives or the BC United.