Greens generate boost in donations
Party’s take almost doubled last year
The B.C. Green party has been quietly amassing what will be its biggest financial war chest for the May 9 provincial election, despite having banned corporate and union donations last September.
“Since we did that, our donations have gone through the roof,” party leader Andrew Weaver said in an interview Tuesday, “so we know that it resonates.”
In a relative sense, that “roof” is orders of magnitude lower than the $12 million that the B.C. Liberal party raised over the same period or the $2.8 million the B.C. NDP raised in 2015.
By contrast, the Greens raised $736,667 in 2016, but that nearly doubled their 2015 donations of $357,504, the party reported in January.
And some 59 per cent of the 2016 total rolled in after it barred corporate and union donations, said party campaign director Taylor Hartrick.
Hartrick said it will make a big difference for the Green party’s campaign.
“We’ve already done significantly more than we have historically in terms of polling and focus groups and qualitative research as well,” he said.
Hartrick, who worked on the last Green campaign in 2013, said he expects to have about 13 to 14 paid staff on the election campaign, compared with one during the last election.
The Green party is holding at 10 per cent of the decided vote, according to the last poll by the firm Mainstreet (the NDP led the survey with 32 per cent of decided support followed by the Liberals at 29 per cent with 23 percent undecided ).
However, Hartrick said that along with better polling and voter engagement, the Greens will have better advertising reach this time to be competitive in more constituencies and not just on Vancouver Island.
“We’re well positioned to run quite a comprehensive campaign across the board,” Hartrick said.
However, while the increase in financial support may signal a maturing of the Green party in B.C., veteran political scientist Norman Ruff cautioned against spreading that too thin in the election.
“If they’ve got some more resources and concentrated them wisely, it could pay off in, let’s say, perhaps two, even three seats,” Ruff said.
Weaver won his seat in Oak Bay Gordon Head in 2013 capturing a healthy 41 per cent of the vote, but Ruff’s estimate is that he won almost as much for his appeal as an independent voice as his position in the Green party.
On that basis, Ruff believes it makes more sense to concentrate efforts on closer races around that base of support.
Outside of its established beach head on southern Vancouver Island, however, Ruff said the Greens run into the “classic first-pastthe-post squeeze” in trying to broaden its success.