Liberals target Kamloops-area riding
After a close 2015 race, party believes former mayor and MLA can take Conservative stronghold
Among British Columbia’s interior ridings, Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo is sought-after territory in the 2019 federal election.
Solidly Conservative since the early 2000s, the 2015 election turned into a closer race with incumbent Cathy McLeod winning with a much smaller margin than her previous outings in 2011 and 2008.
And with Liberal candidate Steve Powrie finishing third with the party’s strongest result since 2006, in almost a dead heat with second-place finisher Bill Sundhu of the NDP, the party has its sights on potentially turning it into a swing riding.
The Liberals recruited Terry Lake, a longtime provincial MLA for Kamloops and popular former mayor, as a star candidate this time around.
Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau has visited the riding twice during the campaign, which shows that the party sees him “as somebody who can take the seat from the conservatives,” said Robert Hanlon, an associate prof in political science at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops.
“I think it really is about Cathy McLeod’s base and those (who) may want to vote Terry Lake in,” Hanlon said, though it is difficult to tell whether either of them has an advantage with two weeks left in the campaign.
There will be seven names on the ballot in Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo in total, including recently named NDP candidate Cynthia Egli, the Greens’ Iain Currie, Ken Finlayson of the People’s Party of Canada, Communist party of Canada’s Peter Kerek and Kira Cheeseborough from a group called the Animal Protection Party of Canada.
A key element of the race, however, will be between the Conservatives and Liberals.
Targeting specific ridings they think they can switch appears to be a key Liberal strategy in this election to shore up potential losses elsewhere, said Hamish Telford, an associate professor in political science at the University of the Fraser Valley.
However, some of the controversies that followed Liberal Leader Trudeau from his first term in government may be liabilities for Lake.
“I would say the shine is off the rose of Justin Trudeau,” McLeod said.
While McLeod wasn’t surprised to see her margin of victory slide in 2015, the year that voters expressed their displeasure with then Conservative leader Stephen Harper’s government, this time around she maintains that on the doorsteps she hears from voters who regret their Liberal support.
“That’s the team (Lake) chose to join,” McLeod said of her well-known competitor. “That’s what I hear. ‘We liked him, but can’t support him with the team that he’s on.’”
Lake said that while he was a B.C. Liberal MLA, which is completely independent of the federal Liberal party, Kamloops voters have always known that he was on the liberal side of the provincial party’s coalition with conservatives.
Lake said that he reminds voters that, because of the way the national election race is shaping up, “the Liberals have the best chance of forming government.”
“I tell people who say they could either vote Liberal or Conservative to consider me, really, if they think the Liberals have a good chance of being elected,” Lake said. “It would be nice to have a government MP for a strong voice in Ottawa.”
However, Green candidate Currie, a local Crown prosecutor, believes he has the momentum to sneak into a more competitive race with an opening created by the fact it took three tries for the NDP to nominate a candidate after the first two nominees stepped down.