ROTHENBURGER – How the Greens will win Kamloops for the BC Liberals
The Greens are the best thing the Liberals have going for them. (Image: Facebook)
WOULD YOU like to know who’s going to win the election? Of course you would, so I’ll tell you.
The pollsters are calling it a horse race, too close to call. “It’s anyone’s to win,” a guy from Ipsos said this week.
The fact that the pollsters even disagree about whether the Liberals or NDP are slightly ahead gives more credence to the assessment that it’s very close. This is different from 2013, when the New Democrats were supposedly comfortably ahead, yet lost in the final days.
The pollsters say they’ve fixed whatever it was they screwed up so badly last time.
But here at home, it’s not nearly so hard to figure things out.
Mel Rothenburger is the former editor of The Kamloops Daily News and a former Mayor of Kamloops. Contact him at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
This reminds me somewhat of the civic election when Dieter Dudy ran for Mayor. Had it not been for a couple of other guys who ran for Mayor and received some votes, we may well have had a Mayor who was brand new to the political game.
I agree with Grouchy 1 on this one.
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If the Greens had truly cared about change, they would have withdrawn their candidates from any riding where they would take votes from the NDP. Didn’t happen though, even though they have no chance of forming a gov’t. ( huge sigh of relief here ). Weaver has been nothing more than a green dyed Liberal all along , he has supported every questionable thing the Liberals have done. I don’t know how people can think that he will be any different if elected again. And if the Greens are ever able to form a government, then you had better be ready to move out of the province, because under the Greens, taxes will be so onerous, that no one will be able to pay them.
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That’s a good assessment, Mr. Rothenburger.
And I fully and wholeheartedly concur we/I should/will vote with our/my
…”hearts and our heads, not with our calculators.”
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My dilemma, do I vote with my heart or my head. You helped me decide.
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Man -dude- you can tell that you really like politics: (16th paragraph) “But that assumes the Greens make no gains, and any Green gains are most likely going to be at the expense of the NDP despite hopeful talk that they’ll actually take votes from the Liberals.”
-When I was a very young guy -six or seven, I believe- my grandmother came to live with us from the prairies; she had never voted in her life or was ever bothered until they gave her a registered election card in BC…So she didn’t have the biggest idea what to do and one day (while taking care of me for the day) she was rather surmising out loud and asked me: Who do I vote for….?
So, me, being extremely young, I told her( in less these words today, yet the same gist): ‘Granny, it’s like a graduation program: The first time you vote, you vote for the lowest one, then next time you vote for the next highest and then the next one higher….’
…She never said anything, yet today I still wonder, in Kamloops, if it would make a difference anyways? (Ie. Kamloops people know what they want, even without their politicians ahead of them, so to speak -always did.)
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Have break it to you but in kamloops south it is ndp splitting the vote not greens. Vote for who you like not who a party tells you to.
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As an NDPer, I kind of agree with Yuri… I think it would have been so much smarter to run only a Green and not NDP in the South — as no doubt Ajax is the issue; and only an NDPer in the North, where Barb could get in and contribute to an NDP government, as lovely as Dan Hines is. The heart and brain agree with me on this one. It is so obvious. All the non-Lib candidates are amazing. Locally, they have the same vision (the non-Lib parties do have substantial differences among them, but not our local people).
It is not too late for candidates to withdraw, is if? Would take leadership and vision to do that. I would do that if t’were me. Imagine what an NDP gov and a Green MLA could do!
Me? I am voting for Beat Klossner, for he represents the ideas of all three of my preferred candidates in South Kamloops. And unless one of the vote-splitters sees the bigger picture, well, congratulations Mr. Stone.
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Hate to tell you this Yuri, but for every Green elected in a contested riding, means one less NDP seat to try and form a government. All electing a Green does, is assure the Liberals of staying in power, and we desperately need change.
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Normally completely agree, Grouch, but a compromise between N and S would have made it highly probably to knock out one BClib, even both. I don’t like the Greens due to their “city-state” plans, but I like our local candidates. With some cooperation, foresight, and vision, we might have had change in Kamloops. Some bristle at this idea of mine and say it goes counter to being genuine. I say with first-past-the-post in place, one has to compromise. Pundits will analyze this election. Mark my words that both the Greens and NDP will regret their choices and stances in 2017…I don’t care if I sound preachy and fear-mongery. I got the same response when I protested Ajax in 2011.
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