The B.C. Liberals have recruited a veteran political voice to warn of the dangers of splitting the centre-right vote in the riding of Parksville-Qualicum.
Jack Weisgerber, the former leader of the B.C. Reform party, is volunteering on Liberal candidate Michelle Stilwell's campaign. He arrived at Stilwell's office as part of a rally with Premier Christy Clark this week.
Weisgerber's Reform party was blamed for splitting off B.C. Liberal voters in the 1996 provincial election, ultimately allowing the B.C. NDP and Glen Clark to form government.
He's now warning of a similar danger in ridings like Parksville-Qualicum, where the B.C. Conservatives are fielding a strong candidate in Dr. David Coupland, a Nanaimo radiologist. The riding is "small-c conservative" with its high concentration of seniors and retirees from other province's and B.C.'s interior, he said.
"I led the Reform party in 1996, we did well in constituencies in this," Weisgerber said of Parksville-Qualcium. "But the net effect of that was to return the NDP and Glen Clark to Victoria. That's my great concern. I see a constituency like this with a tremendously strong canddiate, a really powerful woman, but if there just needs to be a fraction of the centre right vote split off to elect the NDP.
"What you have to do is appeal to people and say look understand what the objective here is, the objective is a to elect a centre right government, to elect a government member for this community, and recognize a vote for the Consertavies is a vote for the NDP," he said. "It's that simple. It's a pretty stark choice. and I believe people need to re-assess what they really want to see."
Weisgerber lies in the Oceanside area.
The Conservative candidate, Coupland, called vote-split warnings a "non-issue."
"Fifty per cent didn't vote [in 2009] so what vote are we splitting?" he asked.
Coupland said voters are tired of the Liberal and NDP parties. "The Liberals have had 12 years, the NDP a decade and neither have done what is right for B.C. in the long-term."
