VANCOUVER — David Eby claimed victory in Vancouver-Point Grey early this morning, unseating Liberal Premier Christy Clark. His campaign manager Kate Van Meer-Mass sent a two-word text message that Eby read aloud to supporters crammed into his West Broadway campaign office around 1 a.m.: "We won."
For most of the night Clark trailed David Eby, a former B.C. Civil Liberties lawyer who she had also bested in a byelection two years ago after Premier Gordon Campbell resigned.
By the time all 147 ballot boxes were counted around 1 a.m., Eby had beaten Clark by 785 votes — 10,162 to 9,377, according to Elections B.C.
Clark made no reference to her own battle in Point Grey during her victory speech, but Liberal advisers said on background that if Clark loses her seat to Eby they expect one of the Liberal MLA-elects will step aside to create a byelection for her.
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“What a night, what a night,” Eby said, addressing a crowded room of supporters, staff and volunteers in attendance at the Kitsilano restaurant serving as his election night headquarters.
“It’s bittersweet so far,” he said, noting the Liberals were projected to win another majority.
It’s relatively rare in Canada for a premier to lose their seat while their party gains government, but it has happened. In 1985 Robert Bourassa’s Liberal government won power but he lost to a Parti Quebecois candidate. He later was elected in a byelection in a Liberal stronghold. And in 1989 Don Getty lost his seat in Alberta. He was re-elected in a byelection in Stettler.
“I’ve got to say we’re incredibly excited about the results that are coming in. We did a really hard push on the advance push,” Eby said. “There are 6,000 votes in that poll, so we’re a long way from knowing how our result looks tonight.”
Clark faced a sustained campaign by both the NDP and third-party groups such as environmentalists who targeted her riding over the Northern Gateway and Kinder Morgan oil pipeline proposals.
Advance voter turnout in Point Grey was much higher than in the 2011 byelection when Clark won by 564 votes. There were 39,998 registered voters for this election, and 5,901 of them cast an advance ballot, a 30 per cent increase from 2009 when 4,379 cast ballots.
It was the advance poll in 2009 that carried Clark, trailing in regular polls, into office.
Colin Hansen, the Liberals’ deputy campaign chair, said that During the election campaign Clark spent much of her time flying around the province trying to rally voters to her cause. But she faced criticism — mostly from the NDP — for not spending more time in her own riding. She campaigned only a few times in Point Grey, and mostly when it fit into an already-cramped election schedule.
But Clark made no apologies for that, saying she believed voters in Point Grey, having had Gordon Campbell as their MLA for 15 years, understood the importance of having a premier as an MLA.
She also told reporters that the issues her riding faced, from transit and transportation to jobs to concerns over pipelines and oil tankers, were the same issues the rest of the province also faced.
The other two party candidates in the riding, BC Conservatives’ Duane Nickull and Green party’s Raunet, appeared not to be really factors in the riding.
Clark has repeatedly said she believed her main opponent was opposition leader Adrian Dix and his New Democrat party platform, not Eby. She refused to debate him during the 2011 campaign, and during this one was rarely seen, telling reporters she believed her constituents would vote for her because she was premier.
The premier does not live in her riding; Eby moved there in 2011. The former director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association and former lawyer for Pivot Legal Society in the Downtown Eastside isn’t a familiar face in the riding’s tony neighbourhoods or UBC campus, either. But Eby attended the all-candidates debates, which Clark skipped.