Orphaned voters and attack ads: BC United fallout continues

Voters who’ve long considered themselves centrists or centre-right are expressing a range of emotions a day after the leader of BC United pulled the party from October’s provincial election: relief, frustration, anger, and disorientation.

CTV News has spoken with multiple party insiders, loyalists, and candidates who paint a picture of a party controlled by Kevin Falcon, whose leadership style was top-down and not conducive to team-building, that’d run out of campaign funds and had little choice but to fold and throw his support behind the BC Conservatives.

“I didn't leave my party, my party left me,” said Peace River South MLA, Mike Bernier. “We basically found out when the rest of the province found out.”

He’s now deliberating on his political future, while long-time MLA and one-time interim BC Liberal leader Shirley Bond has pulled out of October’s election, and Todd Stone has retired from politics and thrown his support behind the BC Conservative candidate in Kamloops. 

“Ultimately it was difficult to maintain two right-of-centre parties in the province,” observed UBC political scientist, Stewart Prest. “But you can't have this kind of shotgun wedding between parties this close to an election and not have some fallout from the decision.”

No political home for some

Some BC United supporters had already defected to the BC Conservative party, frustrated with Falcon’s leadership and the disastrous re-branding from the BC Liberals that left voters confused. Others stuck it out, hoping for a miracle, but others saw the surge of right-wing populism sweeping the country and were resigned to their prospects. 

“Momentum is everything in politics as it is in sports and sometimes you just can't go against the tide and I saw that happening,” said Terry Lake, who held various cabinet portfolios as a BC Liberal and is now one of many frustrated fiscal conservatives who are socially progressive and feel adrift. 

“I got into politics largely to make a difference on big issues like climate change,” he said. “When you have a leader that denies the science of climate change, that makes it very difficult for me to support that party and a lot of people are going to find themselves in that position.” 

Prest said for voters like Lake, “they have to decide if they're ultimately more concerned about reining in spending or maintaining an open and diverse society in British Columbia.”\

BC NDP, Rustad already sparring

For months, Premier David Eby has been directing the brunt of his criticism against John Rustad as the BC Conservatives have grown in opinion polls and United MLAs have defected to his party. 

The day after Falcon’s bombshell announcement that he and his party would be pulling their candidates, the New Democrats launched an attack ad against Rustad, accusing him of supporting costly policies in the many years he was a BC Liberal.

“I hate to use this language, but you've seen David Eby come out and lie about us,” said Rustad in a one-on-one interview with CTV News on Thursday. “He says we're going to cut health-care spending, we're not going to cut healthcare spending. He says we're going to put tolls on, we're not going to do that.”

He said he’s been inundated with positive messages after securing Falcon’s endorsement and the consolidation of the centre-right, insisting he’ll win over orphaned voters “when people see more of our policies come out, additional policies come out, (and) those people will see we are a party that is across the spectrum.”

It’s precisely that spectrum of opinions and values the NDP is now targeting, with the help of old BC United videos. Eby re-posted and “approved” a clip of Falcon when he was still lambasting the BC Conservatives as “too extreme” and as a party that “has candidates that equate vaccinations with Nazism and apartheid.”

So while he’s exited the stage officially, the ghost of Kevin Falcon and his impassioned attacks on Rustad and his party will linger over the campaign.

Election day is Saturday, Oct. 19.