BYELECTION LOSS LEAVES GREENS IN AN ODD SPOT

The Green party and leader Andrew Weaver mounted a vigorous campaign in the recent byelection in Kelowna West, seeking to add to their three-seat breakthrough last spring.

Weaver boasted of spending 10 days in the riding, going back to last fall, when the Greens nominated professional engineer Robert Stupka, partner in a Kelowna-based home design firm.

Weaver presided over two town hall meetings with Stupka, as well as several sessions of door-knocking. Local news media also noted the campaign presence of Sonia Furstenau and Adam Olsen, the other two Green MLAs in the legislature.

The Greens didn’t lack for campaign resources.

They started the year with an injection of $400,000, their share of the financing scheme brought in by Premier John Horgan when he abandoned his pre-election scorn for using public funding to directly support political parties. (The B.C. Liberals and New Democrats each got a first instalment of $1 million.)

Horgan made only a brief, unannounced campaign stop in the riding, recognizing that sitting governments rarely win byelections in Opposition strongholds.

But Weaver talked up the opportunity for voters in the 25-year bailiwick for the B.C. Liberal Party to build on the winds of change that last year transformed the provincial political landscape.

During one of his town hall meetings, he described Stupka as “everything that’s new, everything that’s innovative and everything that Kelowna is going to become,” saying he would “have an incredible influence in a minority government situation.”

At another stop late in the campaign, he explained why the Greens never considered running a joint candidate with their partners in power sharing, the New Democrats.

“The people of Kelowna West can vote for a candidate that puts their interests first, and who says what they believe, rather than saying what they’re told to say,” said Weaver. “The reality is that Green candidates win ridings based on the strength of their own merits.”

More realistically, as the campaign came down to the wire, he quietly predicted the Greens would finish second, behind the Liberals but ahead of the New Democrats.

Instead, when the votes were counted Wednesday night, the Greens finished third, behind NDP candidate Shelley Cook. Returning to the legislature for the Liberals is Ben Stewart, who gave up the seat for Premier Christy Clark after she lost hers in the 2013 election.

Despite Weaver’s efforts, the Green share of the popular vote in the byelection was a mere 12.7 per cent, down a full point from the party’s showing in Kelowna West in the May 2017 general election.

Weaver paid tribute to Stupka “for running a strong campaign based on the values of sustainability and evidence-based decisionmaking.”

But there was no disguising Green’s disappointment that the messaging failed to connect, evident in the candidate’s own statement to the Kelowna Capital News.

“We offered representation that would give the riding a big voice and represents the changing demographic,” Stupka told reporter Kevin Parnell on byelection night. “Unfortunately few (came out) to vote and voted for the status quo.”

The 29 per cent turnout was about 10 points lower than in the 2013 byelection won by Christy Clark. But it was significantly higher than in the last two byelections under the B.C. Liberals in February 2016, both won by the NDP.

Weaver tried to link what he characterized as “extremely low turnout” to the Green drive for electoral reform: “It is clear people do not feel as if elections matter or their votes make a difference. We must do better to engage British Columbians in our democracy.”

But under the mixedmember system of proportional representation favoured by both the Greens and the New Democrats, single-seat byelections to fill vacancies in the legislature would not incorporate the proportionality of a general election.

More to the point was the observation from one of the Liberals that it will be difficult for the Greens to make gains at the expense of the NDP so long as they are propping up their partners in the legislature.

In the one provincial issue that intruded on Okanagan wine country in the closing days of the campaign, the trade dispute with Alberta that triggered a boycott against B.C. wine, Weaver backed the NDP to the hilt.

For all of Weaver’s vacant threats to bring down the government, the B.C. Liberals are readily positioned as the party of change.

Whereas if a voter likes the way things are going under the NDP, why not vote for the senior partners in the power-sharing arrangement?

Nor is there any easy way for Weaver to disrupt that dynamic going forward. The Greens continue to influence the government on isolated issues, from ride-sharing (supportive) to union certification votes (opposed).

But Weaver and his two colleagues have every intention of supporting Premier John Horgan when and where it counts, on the key confidence vote on the budget in the legislature.

Not even approval in the fall referendum of a switch to proportional representation from the current firstpast-the-post system would change the incentives for the Greens to maintain the New Democrats in power for a full four-year term of government.

For the crafty New Democrats structured the enabling legislation for the referendum to ensure a changeover would not take effect until July 1, 2021.

If the Greens bring down the government on a confidence motion before that, the election would be held on first-past-the-post. Vpalmer@postmedia.com

For all of (Andrew) Weaver’s vacant threats to bring down the government, the B.C. Liberals are readily positioned as the party of change.