NDP girding for election campaign
Local BC NDP ridings have yet to choose candidates to run in the upcoming election, but members began drumming up attention by waving NDP signs along Harvey Avenue Saturday afternoon.
“The campaign has started unofficially,” said Steve Burke, BC NDP vice-president of the Kelowna-West riding.
“As we’re getting closer, people are getting more attentive to the issues that really matter to them and they’re starting to think about how they’re going to be voting.”
The upcoming provincial election is scheduled for May 9.
“We want to hit the ground running,” said Burke. “This is what this is all about today, so that when the candidate steps in, we’ve got the organization, we’ve got the machine going and we’re going to put up a really good campaign.”
In the 2013 election, the three NDP candidates finished second in all three ridings: Kelowna-Lake Country, Kelowna-Mission and Kelowna-West.
The NDP received about 27 per cent of the popular vote, less than half that was received by Premier Christy Clark, Steve Thomson and Norm Letnick, all of whom will be running again in this year’s election.
“Kelowna ridings are always a struggle, but we’re seeing changing demographics,” said Burke. “Historically, we have had a very conservative older population . . . they’re not worried about social services or employment, because they’re almost retired.
“For young families in this riding, which there are more and more, and young professionals, I think opportunity sides more with the NDP than the so-called conservative Liberals.”
The local NDPs are currently undergoing a vetting process and will be choosing candidates soon, said Burke.
“We put out a call to 30 very quality people within the area to run, and we had an enthusiastic response,” he said of the Kelowna West riding. “Four or five people got really serious about it, and now we’re down to the final few. I’m expecting that a month from now we will have a candidate all lined up and set.”