The membership sign-up period in the B.C. Conservative Party leadership race is now over, the candidate field is set, and now the campaign will begin in earnest.
And there’s a good chance things are going to get a bit nasty between now and voting day on May 30th.
The party will spend the next three weeks reviewing about 40,000 of those membership signups to see if all the rules were followed in obtaining them. If past leadership races in other political parties are anything to go by, look for many of those memberships to be disqualified for various irregularities.
One of the candidates, businessman Yuri Fulmer, posted on social media that his campaign team signed up more than 15,000 members, to which a member of another candidate’s campaign team responded that such a claim was a “lie.”
Fulmer’s candidacy is interesting. He ran for the party in the 2024 election and lost the West Vancouver-Sea to Sky riding by a narrow margin to the Green Party candidate, Jeremy Valeriote.
At the beginning of the leadership campaign, we sat down for coffee, and he told me that he was not one of those advocating for “pure” Conservative values and instead favoured a “big party” approach.
Since then, however, he has spent much of the campaign attacking those associated with the former B.C. Liberal Party (particularly candidate Caroline Elliot) and has aligned himself with far-right-winger One B.C. MLA Dallas Brodie.
Fulmer has agreed that, should he win the leadership, the Conservatives would not field candidates in five ridings to give Brodie’s party a better chance of electing candidates.
Needless to say, his scheme has not gone over well in some party cycles.
Former B.C. Liberal strategist Mike McDonald, on a recent episode of his Hotel Pacifico podcast, predicted that a Fulmer victory would result in a “moderate” political party taking shape as early as the morning after the vote.
I think he is likely correct. If Brodie ever holds sway over the party, it is easy to envision more than a few current MLAs fleeing the party for political pastures that are more center-right than purely right.
But Fulmer must be considered a dark horse when it comes to actually winning. The likely frontrunner seems to be former B.C. Liberal cabinet minister Iain Black, who has run an error-free campaign.
The same cannot be said of former B.C. Liberal MLA (and current B.C. Conservative MLA) Peter Milobar, who lost his campaign manager and was fined by the party for missing a payment deadline.
Nor can the same be said of Elliot, who has drawn plenty of criticism internally for her campaign being run by Ontario-based federal Conservatives and for taking on an air of we-already-have-this-thing-won.
In fact, an undercurrent in this leadership race is the fact that the federal Conservative Party has inserted itself in ways seldom seen before.
The B.C. Liberals made it clear for years that they were not associated with the federal Liberal Party in any way, as it went through several leadership races over 25 years.
Some party insiders tell me that pro-Pierre Poilievre folks (like his former campaign manager Jenni Byrne) are in the Fulmer camp, while anti-Poilievre forces (like prominent Ontario strategist Kory Teneycke) are aligned with Elliot.
Expect some of the rancour that exists at the federal level to increasingly be on display in this provincial leadership race. Several party-sponsored debates await, and you can bet the farm they will not be super-polite gatherings of like-minded folks.
As I have written in this space before, this party is fundamentally divided against itself. Pure conservatives remain pitted against those who favour the free enterprise coalition model, and it remains to be seen whether those cracks can ever be healed, even with a new leader.
Keith Baldrey is the legislature bureau chief for Global TV.
Keith.Baldrey@globalnews.ca
