NDP optimism shows in Kamloops nominations

The social justicey folks finally nominated their candidates today. After an earlier delay, the NDP for both the Kamloops-North Thompson and Kamloops-South Thompson provincial ridings combined their official nomination meeting in the BCGEU meeting room in Valleyview.  

Putting the two together was a good idea, as it attracted a very respectable crowd of better than a hundred. And, since Tom Friedman (pictured in this post) was unopposed for the nomination in Kamloops South, that riding association would have had a challenge generating much enthusiasm for its own meeting.

I chose a comfie twirly chair with wheels and settled in as the three candidates in Kamloops North took to the podium. The best speaker of the three was legal-aid lawyer Kathy Kendall, who has learned the knack of pausing at the right times for applause.

Throughout the meeting, there were the appropriate cat calls and snide asides whenever the Liberals, Christy Clark, Terry Lake or Kevin Krueger were mentioned.

Technically, the candidate with the lowest number of votes on the first ballot was to be dropped, with the remaining pair moving to a run-off on the second count. But Kendall won a majority in the first round over Chad Moats and Cecile McVittie, so it wasn’t necessary.

Kendall had the support of three-time federal candidate Michael Crawford, while McVittie was backed by former Kamloops MLA Cathy McGregor. The latter, who bowed out a decade ago, was the last NDP MLA elected in Kamloops.

NDP leader Adrian Dix is no slouch in the speech department either, rallying the troops to get out and defeat the HST and then the Liberals in a one-two punch.

The optimism in Kamloops North is well-founded. Lake beat Doug Brown by only 510 votes in the 2009 election, and that was in a year when Gordon Campbell was still riding high and the HST wasn’t on the agenda. And while Lake later survived a recall campaign, several thousand eligible voters — if Moats’ numbers are to be believed — wanted him out.

In Kamloops South, not so much. Kevin Krueger, after a narrow win over the late Fred Jackson in Kamloops-North Thompson in 1996, has been relatively comfortable ever since. Switching over to Kamloops South, he blitzed Friedman by more than 4,000 votes in 2009.

Whether the Liberals’ problems eclipse those of the New Democrats remains to be seen, but we’ll get a good preview of that when the results of the HST referendum are released in a few weeks.