Fundraising success, star candidates spur optimism among B. C. Liberals
Six months to go before the election and the word out of B. C. Liberal headquarters is that things are looking up, leastways compared with the downer first half of the year.
“The annual resource industry fundraising dinner is SOLD OUT!” declared campaign director Mike McDonald in an upbeat update, No. 28 in a series, that went out to party members this week.
The Liberals moved some 500 tickets to representatives of the mining, forestry and energy sectors at $ 350 apiece for the Nov. 28 sit- down at the Fairmont Waterfront in Vancouver, ensuring a gross of $ 175,000, a net probably two thirds as much.
Every team needs a head cheerleader and for B. C. Liberals, that role is being filled by McDonald, the longtime Christy Clark friend and booster.
“The Big Guy has done it again,” he writes in reference to a recent $ 125- a- plate effort by cabinet minister Rich Coleman. “He jammed, stuffed, and vacuum- packed over 400 supporters into his annual fundraising dinner. He also raised a huge amount of campaign cash during the silent and live auction.”
Coleman, as the campaign director went on to note, has already raised all the money he needs for the campaign in his relatively secure Fort Langley-Aldergrove bailiwick, meaning he’ll be sharing the proceeds with more needy ridings.
Not every Liberal cash call goes as well as the foregoing two instances. The party was forced to put off a leader’s reception set for Thursday in the provincial capital because of flagging ticket sales. Provincial Liberals attributed the apparent lack of interest to the rival demands of the local federal political parties, which have been rounding up dollars, volunteers and other campaign resources for the approaching Nov. 26 byelection to fill Victoria’s vacant seat in the House of Commons.
The Victoria event will be rescheduled to the new year. Meanwhile, McDonald’s latest update lists five other fundraisers over the next two weeks, with tickets going as high as $ 200 apiece. Would be interesting to know how many of the paying customers for the aforementioned events also bought a seat at the October leader’s dinner for New Democratic Party leader Adrian Dix, which grossed $ 350,000.
Then again, as McDonald hastens to point out, Clark had her own leader’s dinner in June of this year, and it grossed a record- for- the- Liberals $ 600,000.
“We are holding successful fundraisers across the province,” he boasts, citing the premier’s dinner as well as events in “Cranbrook, the Fraser Valley, Prince George and the Okanagan.”
Elsewhere in his enthusiastic missive, McDonald cites another encouraging sign — the number and calibre of candidates seeking nominations to run for the governing party in the next election.
There was that four- way fight for the nomination in Penticton, won by the local mayor, Dan Ashton.
Criminologist John Martin, touted as a star candidate by the Conservatives when he ran for them in the spring byelection in Chilliwack, defected to the Liberals and will now run for them in the other Chilliwack riding.
Martin’s fellow criminologist Darryl Plecas is going for the party nomination in Abbotsford South.
There’s a looming two- way fight between Andrew Wilkinson, a former deputy minister and Rhodes scholar, and Suzanne Anton, the former Vancouver city councillor, in the Quilchena seat being vacated by former cabinet minister Colin Hansen.
Former Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan is preparing to contest the False Creek seat, where he may well face a direct challenge from former Liberal MLA and Christy Clark supporter and staffer Lorne Mayencourt. This not-exhaustive list of candidates, declared
Dollars, candidates, and the upbeat mood at the party convention are all signs that the party itself is in better shape than it looked to be six months ago.
and possible, stands in marked contrast to the expectations earlier this year, when the Conservatives were jostling the Liberals for second place in the opinion poll and government MLAs were lining up to announce that they were not running again.
The relative change of fortunes for the governing party was noted this week by Martyn Brown, the former Gordon Campbell chief of staff turned pundit, and no fan of Christy Clark and her re- made version of the B. C. Liberals.
“They’ve done a much better job,” he told me during an interview Thursday on Voice of B. C. on Shaw TV. “I take my hat off to the organization and to her. I think they’re having some good, hard- fought campaigns in Penticton and elsewhere, and the like ... I think Christy has done a good job of reaching out.”
Dollars, candidates, and the upbeat mood at the party convention are all signs that the party itself is in better shape than it looked to be six months ago.
But every week adds to the government’s lengthy list of public relations debacles as even the most straightforward government initiatives — the anti- bullying forum, a public consultation on Burnaby Hospital, the mining development strategy — fall victim to one in- house screw- up or another.
A reminder there that for all the progress being made in fundraising and candidate recruitment, the greater challenge facing the Liberal is with their own record as a government and the stumblings of their leader.