NDP presses Cook to run in Kelowna West byelection
Resignation of Christy Clark gives NDP 2nd chance to win riding
If Shelley Cook decides to again represent the NDP in the Kelowna West byelection, she’ll have a $4,395.93 head start over any rivals.
That’s the surplus balance in the NDP’s books for the riding, which currently doesn’t have any provincial representation following the resignation of former Liberal premier Christy Clark.
“We have talked to Shelley about running again, and she’s mulling it over,” Karen Abramsen, president of the BC NDP Kelowna West constituency association, said Tuesday.
“We’d like her to run because she’d make an excellent candidate again,” Abramsen said. “The sooner we can select a candidate the better, because then they can hit the ground running.”
Cook, a former director of the Kelowna branch of the John Howard Society, is studying toward a doctoral degree at UBC Okanagan.
She won almost 25 per cent of the popular vote in the riding in the May election, well behind the 60 per cent claimed by Clark. However, that was better than the share of the vote earned by NDP candidates in each of the two other Kelowna-area provincial ridings.
If Cook decides to run in the byelection, which has not yet been called, she could face the former Liberal MLA who held the riding before Clark.
Ben Stewart, who won re-election by a wide margin in 2013 and then made way for Clark, who needed a seat after losing hers in Vancouver, has said he will seek the Liberal nomination in Kelowna West.
Elections BC on Tuesday released the financial information submitted by all candidates who contested the election.
In the Central Okanagan, the top spender was Norm Letnick, Liberal MLA for Kelowna-Lake Country, whose campaign income was $96,055 and expenses were $87,418, for a surplus of $8,636.
Steve Thomson, Liberal MLA for KelownaMission,
had campaign income of $94,927 with equivalent expenses, so his paperwork shows a zero balance.
Clark, too, spent all the $80,927 she reported as campaign income. Her biggest election expenses were advertising ($25,00), signs and brochures ($14,000), and research and polling ($9,500).
Cook, the NDP candidate who ran against Clark, had campaign income of $24,577. That was significantly higher than the campaign funds available to NDP candidates in Kelowna-Lake Country and Kelowna-Mission.
The main reason, Abramsen said, is that NDP supporters around B.C. made donations specifically to the Kelowna West riding association in hopes of seeing Clark defeated.