In the puzzling world of the preferential ballot for the BC Liberal Party leadership, there are candidates striving to be … No. 2.
The safest money is on former cabinet minister-cum-real estate executive Kevin Falcon as the front-runner. But the bets are off if he doesn’t seize a first-ballot majority in the February vote. The second choices of the voters for lower-finishing candidates take on significant meaning as they are counted in subsequent ballots.
This has been the successful multi-ballot path for many leaders: Conservative leaders Erin O’Toole and Andrew Scheer and BC Liberal Andrew Wilkinson are among the recent Canadian ones. While the outcome largely depends on how campaigns persuade people to buy memberships by late December, voters will be courted to make someone their second, third, even fourth and fifth choice if their preferred candidate doesn’t remain on the ballot.
The larger the race, the more it is possible the vote splinters; a one-ballot win would be quite a coronation in a large pack. Thus, the objective for candidates is to secure second-place ranking by supporters of lower-finishing candidates to build their numbers as each ballot ensues – and eventually, to cross the 50% support line. Each of the 87 ridings will divide 100 points among candidates each ballot. It’s complicated.
The two most likely alternatives to Falcon come to the race from different environments. Michael Lee is in his second term as an MLA. Val Litwin is not even in his second month as a newcomer to politics.
They hold little in common ideologically beyond party allegiance and hostility to the BC NDP. They are studies in the fork in the road for the once-dominant provincial party that now finds itself in an existential conundrum, wondering if a name change and a rebrand and a shift left or right can slay the NDP in 2024. The friction threatens to splinter the party if the chosen leader isn’t a bridge-builder. Before it defeats the NDP, it has to stop defeating itself.
Lee, the Vancouver-Langara MLA, finished third after eventual winner Wilkinson and the putative front-runner Dianne Watts in 2018. Neither of the two ahead of him seek office any longer, and Lee is trying again with most of his old crew and some new followers.
The congenial qualities Lee presents carry with them intrinsic conservative values. No doubt, even though he will dispel it, the social policies he would espouse would find greatest appeal in traditionally rooted British Columbians. Even if he is an MLA there, in a city like Vancouver this is more challenging than most elsewhere, apart from the Island.
Lee is a remarkably likable man, serene and comfortable in his accomplished once-lawyerly being. There is little of the fidgetiness of Falcon, but there is also little of the visceral fibre of partisanship and polarity that colour – for better and worse – the province’s politics. He didn’t set the legislature alight as a front-bencher Wilkinson accorded status respect, but that isn’t everything to assess after all.
In him you could find a leader who would be obsessively looking for third options and brokerage policy-making. Whether that can translate more immediately into electability is an open question, but the pandemic offers an opportunity to redraft our concept of politics, and maybe it needs to be less about confrontation and more about consideration of the other viewpoints. As long as he isn’t captive to interests – and that’s a difficulty almost every candidate has and will handle in leadership – Lee has displayed the earnestness of public service.
Litwin, a former business leader who has spent the last four years at the helm of the BC Chamber of Commerce, is easily the most intriguing of the candidates in this race. In part because he’s lesser known with a seemingly high ceiling, in part because he stands to bring a needed jolt into the party, his trajectory will be the one most worth watching. How he grows, or doesn’t, might define the race.
Outsiders don’t easily penetrate a party’s fortress and system. But Litwin knows each riding’s movers and shakers – or ought to, if he was doing his job running more than 120 chamber chapters – and has the greatest potential to demonstrate the power of a grassroots groundswell. Or, for that matter, he could just fizzle.
This stage is about organizational, militaristic membership hawking to become the first – or at worst, second – choice on that ranked ballot. Money to support the effort has to emerge along the way.
In conversation, Litwin oozes energy, optimism in the mission, and a well-defined purpose – the latter, as I’ve learned, is a major hindrance if you aren’t articulating why you’re doing this and what you’ll do. His first few policy steps will be crucial, because he is surely going to stress liberal values.
Yes, there are other candidates: MLA Ellis Ross, who is taking the conservative track; political consultant Gavin Dew, who is staking the youth cohort; and probably before long MLA Renee Merrifield, who will also occupy the right-of-centre party wing. They might be playing for future considerations, for Lee’s 2018 next-time approach, or for lightning to strike.
Of this clan, Litwin has the authentic air of openness as a newbie with no track record, even if his tent leaves a gaggle of conservatives in open air. And this, in a nutshell, is the BC Liberals’ dilemma: it isn’t a functional coalition, and the internal war could easily produce two parties if its leadership isn’t careful.
John Horgan is today too tall to topple, but I wouldn’t bet on him running again in 2024. He has shepherded the province through its greatest challenge in our lifetime. It won’t get any more rewarding than this as a leader. Why not leave with as much of a halo as possible?
His successor? Attorney General David Eby? Ravi Kahlon, the minister overseeing economic recovery? Perhaps Selina Robinson, the finance minister. The most fascinating possibility is Bowinn Ma, the infrastructure minister doubtlessly heading for a larger role by the election. Their two-term government has cleverly moved into the middle on every issue that does not intrinsically matter to the base.
Are any Liberal leadership candidates able to handle Horgan or those three? That’s an issue for later. For the time being, being No. 2 matters to get to be No. 1. •
Kirk LaPointe is publisher and editor-in-chief of BIV and vice-president, editorial, of Glacier Media.
