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Vaughn Palmer: Expect Christy Clark to push that point if she runs to replace Justin Trudeau
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VICTORIA — Hanging on to power while picking a new leader, then hoping the newcomer can secure another term of office?
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It has been the preferred method of transition for B.C. governments of every political stripe over the past four decades. And it has worked more often than not.
1986. Premier Bill Bennett announced retirement after 10 years in office, clearing the way for a leadership contest in the governing Social Credit party. A dozen candidates sought the job.
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The winner, former cabinet minister Bill Vander Zalm, was nowhere near being Bennett’s choice for a successor. The distancing helped, rather than hurt.
Vander Zalm’s populist charm contrasted sharply to Bennett’s dour corporatism. The new premier called a snap election and defeated the NDP.
1991. Vander Zalm resigned after being found guilty of violating his own conflict of interest guidelines in the sale of his Fantasy Gardens theme park.
The Socreds staged another high-profile leadership contest. Socred insider Rita Johnston narrowly defeated former cabinet minister Grace McCarthy.
Unlike McCarthy, Johnston was too close to Vander Zalm to restore the party’s fortunes. She lost badly to the NDP under Mike Harcourt.
1995. Now it was Harcourt’s turn to go. He took the fall for the Nanaimo NDP funnelling the proceeds of charity bingos into its own coffers.
An NDP leadership convention picked cabinet minister Glen Clark as the next leader and premier. Harcourt had styled himself as a cool premier for a hot province. Nobody ever said that about the hard-driving Clark.
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Again, the contrast paid off. In the 1996 election, Clark narrowly defeated the B.C. Liberals under Gordon Campbell.
1999. Clark resigned while under investigation in a casino-licensing scandal. The winner of the subsequent leadership race was attorney general Ujjal Dosanjh, who’d broken the news to Clark that he was under investigation.
Despite that bit of distancing, Dosanjh couldn’t rescue the NDP from myriad fiscal and policy failures. The NDP was crushed in the 2001 election, losing all but two seats to the Campbell-led B.C. Liberals.
2010. Campbell wounded himself by introducing the harmonized sales tax after an election in which it was barely mentioned. After failing to rescue the tax, he decided to leave.
The leadership race was won in early 2011 by former cabinet minister turned broadcaster Christy Clark. She was not Campbell’s choice — that was second place finisher Kevin Falcon.
The contrast worked the same electoral magic as the Bennett-Vander Zalm and Harcourt-Glen Clark transitions.
With two full years to put her own stamp on the party, in 2013 Clark led the B.C. Liberals to victory and their fourth successive term of office.
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Four years later, Clark lost her legislative majority in a campaign distinguished by overconfidence and incompetence.
The new premier, following Clark, was New Democrat John Horgan, who took office in partnership with the Greens. In 2020, he ambushed the Greens, repudiated the partnership, called a snap election and won decisively.
2022. Horgan, plagued by the cancer that would claim his life last year, announced his resignation. Cabinet minister David Eby secured the leadership and the premier’s office after party insiders derailed his lone opponent for the job.
Eby spent the next two years squandering the fiscal surplus and goodwill he inherited from his predecessor. Still in last year’s election, he managed to hang on to the NDP majority by a single seat, secured by a 22-vote margin.
Six times over the past 40 years, incumbent B.C. premiers cleared the way for a successor who could lead the party to another term.
Four times the new premier went on to win the next election. Twice they failed to do so.
The common factor in three of the most successful transitions was a favourable contrast in leadership styles, however briefly it lasted. In 2024, the contrast was unfavourable and the new leader just managed to survive.
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In the two transitions that failed, the new leaders had neither the time nor the ability to distance themselves from their predecessor’s record.
Expect to hear more about one of the foregoing successful transitions as the race to succeed Justin Trudeau unfolds in the weeks ahead.
Christy Clark is expected to seek the leadership of the federal Liberals. Though she’s been out of office for going on eight years, the taste for politics, once acquired, is not easily shed. She once compared it to an old boyfriend.
“In the first few months after you leave you still remember the reasons why you left,” she told B.C. Business magazine. “Then a couple of years down the road, you’re sitting alone at night by yourself in your living room, maybe into a glass of wine, and you’re thinking ‘God that guy was great! I miss him so much,’ And you pick up the phone and dial.”
Lately Clark has been trying to reconnect with her old flame, politics.
She’d have less time to turn things around this year. Still, she’ll be mentioning, — in a “been there, done that” sort of way — how she pulled out the big win after an unpopular leader stepped down.
vpalmer@postmedia.com
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