Christy Clark could still win a majority, and she may need it
Liberals could still win slim majority — and their leader’s job likely depends on it
The fate of Christy Clark’s Liberal government — and the future of British Columbia — could be decided during three nail-biting days in May.
It’s officially called “the final count period” — May 22-24, right after the Victoria Day long weekend.
That’s when Elections B.C. officials will open up 176,000 absentee ballots and count the last remaining votes from Tuesday’s stunning provincial election.
For Liberal leader Christy Clark, NDP leader John Horgan and Green party leader Andrew Weaver, the stakes could not be higher.
Clark’s Liberals won 43 seats on election night — one short of a majority in the 87-seat legislature. The NDP got 41 seats and the Greens picked up three.
If those results remain the same, it means the NDP and Greens could team up to topple Clark on a confidence vote. That could vault Horgan into the premier’s office, backed by Weaver’s balance-of-power Greens.
That’s assuming the Greens don’t side with Clark instead, something Weaver has not ruled out in this wildest of election outcomes.
There were several close ridings on election night that could change hands when the absentee votes are counted.
But it was nowhere closer than in the Vancouver Island riding of Courtenay-Comox, where NDP candidate Ronna-Rae Leonard beat Liberal Jim Benninger by just nine votes.
“It’s going to be close,” said Benninger, who believes there are about 1,500 absentee votes still to be counted in the riding.
“It will have an enormous impact, not only for this riding but possibly for all of B.C.”
When the razor-thin margin of victory in the riding was announced on election night, the New Democrats were immediately nervous. The riding contains a Canadian Forces airbase and Benninger is the former base commander.
It appears the Liberals did well among military voters. At the voting station set up at Airport Elementary School — the closest voting station to the base — Benninger beat his NDP opponent by a better than 2-to-1 margin.
“There was a lot of good will in the military community,” said Benninger, commander of CFB Comox from 2011 to 2014.
Is it possible a large number of military members stationed away from the base mailed in their ballots? If so, those absentee votes could put Benninger over the top — and give Christy Clark a narrow majority government.
But, to the NDP’s undoubted relief, the ex-commander thinks that will not be a major factor.
“Out of the 1,500 personnel at CFB Comox, there’s probably around 40 to 60 people stationed overseas or somewhere else away from the base at any given time,” he said, adding no one should assume they all mailed in their votes.
“They’re focused on their duties,” he said. “And any thoughts about back home are usually about their families. To be honest, I think voting is probably not near the top of their priority list.”
But Benninger said he still feels confident. There are a lot of wealthy retired seniors in the riding who may have mailed in ballots from places like Arizona, and he expects to have an edge with the snowbird set.
And he said his campaign office was just a few blocks away from the main Elections B.C. returning office, where people were eligible to cast their votes at any time during the election campaign. Those votes are considered absentee ballots.
“I know a lot of people came into the campaign office and we sent them down there to vote,” he said.
Clark and the Liberals are no doubt praying it’s enough.
“She phoned me the other day and I told her, ‘We’re optimistic, we’re upbeat,’” Benninger said. “We’re anxious to see the final result, because both the premier and I would prefer a majority government.” No kidding. But the New Democrats think they could do well in the absentee vote, too.
“We had a full-throttle campaign in the riding with top-flight organizers and a big rally with John Horgan,” said NDP campaign strategist Glen Sanford, adding the New Democrats took most of the absentee votes in the riding in 2013.
“We worked really hard there,” he said. “We feel really good about it.”
Others don’t feel so good about the possibility of an NDP-Green government seizing power — especially the B.C. Liberals’ business backers.
“The economy is at risk,” said Chris Gardner, president of the B.C. Independent Contractors and Businesses Association.
“The NDP and Greens both came out very strongly against the Kinder Morgan pipeline and liquefied natural gas development and the Site C dam and the bridge to replace to the George Massey Tunnel.
“That’s a lot of construction jobs and a lot of pink slips they would be handing out. We’re extremely concerned.”
As the business community pulls for Clark to claw back her Liberal majority, there are rumblings in the party about how they got into this mess in the first place.
Former Liberal finance minister Kevin Falcon criticized the Liberals’ campaign tactics last week. Now Clark’s former press secretary is piling on.
Chris Olsen said the Liberals made a “crucial error” by falsely accusing a voter who approached Clark on the campaign trail of being an NDP member sent to confront her.
In a brief sequence that went viral on social media, retired civil servant Linda Higgins shook hands with Clark in a grocery store and told her “I would never vote for you because of what …” before Clark cut her off, turned her back and walked away.
The Liberals said Higgins was an NDP member and took five days to retract the false allegation. All the while, an #IamLinda hashtag was trending on Twitter.
“The Liberal campaign should have apologized as quickly as possible,” said Olsen, Clark’s press secretary from 2011 to 2012.
“But they made it worse instead and it may have cost them a majority government,” he said, noting Liberal cabinet minister Naomi Yamamoto lost the North Vancouver seat where the incident took place.
These kind of rumblings could get louder if the Liberals don’t re-capture their majority when the absentee votes are counted. If it remains a minority, some angry Liberal sharks could start circling Christy Clark.