B.C. New Democrats launched into three Vancouver Island battleground ridings Thursday, with leader Adrian Dix seeking to pick the “low-hanging fruit” of vulnerable local Liberal seats.
Dix campaigned in Comox Valley and Parksville-Qualicum before gathering South Island NDP supporters to an evening rally in Saanich North and the Islands.
“In 2009, we lost this riding by 258 votes, and we’re not going to let that happen again,” said Gary Holman, NDP candidate in Saanich North.
Dix told more than 150 cheering supporters at the Mary Winspear Centre in Sidney that the NDP would take “the hard road to victory” — with a positive campaign and policies — rather than ducking issues and speaking in sound bites and commercials like the Liberals.
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The NDP emphasis on Liberal-held Island ridings is a sign the party sees the seats as ripe for takeover, said political scientist Norman Ruff.
“They must feel reasonably confident about all of Vancouver Island, and maybe regard them as low-hanging fruit that they could pick very easily,” he said.
“They regard these ridings, obviously, as take-able.”
In an interview, Dix said he is confident in his “extraordinarily strong team up and down Vancouver Island.”
However, he wouldn’t go so far as to predict a sweep of the Island’s 14 ridings, saying that will be up to voters on election day — May 14.
“We’re campaigning hard on every seat on Vancouver Island,” he said.
“If you look at the results in Comox, Saanich and Oak Bay ridings, they were very close last time, all of them, and we have stronger campaigns in all three ridings this time.”
The general sense of the B.C. Liberal campaign on the Island is one of disarray, Ruff said. The party doesn’t yet have a candidate in Nanaimo-North Cowichan, and a recent Angus-Reid poll put the Liberals in third place on the Island, behind the B.C. Greens.
Nonetheless, the Liberal campaign in Parksville-Qualicum is going well, said candidate Michelle Stilwell, a Paralympic gold medallist. Dix’s visit will have little impact on voters, she said.
“The response I’m getting at the doors is [that] people know what’s at stake in this coming election, and are pretty firm they don’t want more spending and more debt,” she said.
The Liberals sought to challenge Dix during his Comox Valley stop, dispatching incumbent Education Minister Don McRae to crash his rally.
“I went to actually hear some of the platform because they haven’t been very forthcoming,” McRae said.
“But when I got there to try and listen, all the media wanted to do was talk to me. So I couldn’t hear first- hand.”
The two politicians shook hands and commented on each other’s clothing. Dix laughed off McRae’s appearance in Courtenay.
“I like Don, he’s a good guy and it was good to see him,” Dix said.
“I didn’t worry about it. I went over and said hi to him. I wanted to check whether he was an undecided voter.”
