NDP CANDIDATE BLAMES HIS OWN PARTY FOR LOSS

Lali says he lost Fraser-Nicola riding due to ‘unnecessary’ nomination fight

After losing a comeback bid in the B.C. election, former NDP cabinet minister Harry Lali blames his own party and leader for forcing him to fight “a war on two fronts.”

Lali’s candidacy for the NDP nomination in his former Fraser-Nicola riding was held up for months while the party tried to recruit someone more on side with party policy on resource development and less encumbered with baggage from the past.

NDP Leader John Horgan intervened personally to try to persuade Lali to drop out in favour of Aaron Sam, chief of the Lower Nicola Indian Band.

When Lali balked, the party grudgingly green-lighted his candidacy and he went on to defeat Sam at a delayed nomination meeting on March 18.

“It was a good exercise in democracy and Aaron Sam has nothing to be ashamed of,” was Lali’s characterization of the nomination fight at the time.

But after losing the main event on May 9 to B.C. Liberal incumbent Jackie Tegart — she defeated him by 700 votes, 100 more than in their initial matchup in 2013 — Lali’s thinking featured some revision.

“The nomination fight was totally unnecessary, and was a self-inflicted wound from party headquarters in Burnaby,” Lali told reporter Barbara Roden of the Ashcroft Cache Creek Journal this week.

“It sucked up a lot of time and energy. I announced I was seeking the nomination in May 2016, and then spent eight or nine months fighting for the nomination instead of organizing, getting volunteers, and door-knocking. It was demoralizing for the team.

“Napoleon was a great warrior, but he couldn’t fight a war on two fronts,” he added, never shy about stating his qualifications for high office.

The four-term MLA (199101, 2005-09) came into the campaign with an advantage from electoral redistribution, which restored some communities to the riding that voted NDP in the past.

But that wasn’t enough to overcome the burdens imposed by his own party as well as a challenge from the upstart Green candidate, the aptly named Arthur Green.

“Arthur Green did not stop working, raising money and awareness, which is to his credit, while we were fighting an internal war and waiting for the ever-elusive date for the nomination.”

Green took 2,300 votes, 16 per cent of those cast, cutting into the NDP margin, according to Lali. On that score, Green fired back through a letter to the editor published in the journal this week.

“I must, however, take exception to Mr. Lali’s comments blaming me for stealing votes from his campaign,” he wrote. “This, of course, makes no sense, as it’s my electoral duty to do exactly that. It could easily be said that all three other candidates did the same to me … Greens are not going away, no matter how much Mr. Lali and the NDP whine!”

And people wonder why the NDP and the Greens could have difficulty combining forces after this year’s closecall provincial election.

Nor could Green resist a parting shot at Lali: “If he debated about what his party would look like moving forward, instead of how bad the Liberals were in retrospect, he may actually gain support instead of losing it. In all six debates, and even in his advertising, a clear picture of his party moving forward was second, compared to bashing our Liberal counterpart. If he had just stayed home and dilly-dallied, then the electorate might have elected Harry Lali.”

In Fraser-Nicola, even the Greens fight for office with the gloves off, it seems.

Asked if this was his last hurrah, Lali hedged.

“It’s too early to say right now,” he told the reporter, Roden. “Never say never. I live and breathe politics. You’re not going to see me go away. When I lose I don’t go into hiding, and I keep an even keel. I’m a gracious winner and a magnanimous loser.”

Well, yes and no on the magnanimous. He was gracious to Tegart on her re-election (“I have a lot of respect for her, and wish her the best of luck”) but his shots at his party and leader must have them smarting at NDP headquarters.

Still, it did not match the blast he delivered to his own side in his previous defeat in 2013. Then he blamed the party’s opposition to resource development and infrastructure, particularly then-leader Adrian Dix for his mid-campaign flip-flop on the proposed twinning of the Kinder Morgan pipeline.

“It basically decimated Interior and northern B.C. for us — rural B.C., basically,” Lali said at the time. “You can’t be against (Enbridge’s) Northern Gateway, you can’t be against Site C, you can’t be against Kinder Morgan and all of that because the message from the blue-collar worker is: Those are my jobs. I’m in construction, I need that job.”

In exchange for being allowed to run this time, Lali accepted the party’s current opposition to Kinder Morgan, Site C and other projects. But his reluctant conversion did not translate into a winning margin in Fraser-Nicola.

The NDP hoped to gain that seat and two others from the Liberals in the Interior. Instead, the party lost all three and two others it held at dissolution.

The result was one of the poorest showings in NDP history in the North and Interior, with major implications for Horgan if he is called on to form a government in the next few weeks.

But that is a topic for another day.

The nomination fight was totally unnecessary, and was a self-inflicted wound from party headquarters.

HARRY LALI, NDP candidate

in Fraser-Nicola