As B.C. election looms, party leaders target key ridings

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John Horgan’s election campaign tour drove twice through Kelowna on Saturday without stopping, a reversal from a prewrit trip in which the NDP leader said his team would compete for seats in the cradle of the provincial free-enterprise movement now represented by the BC Liberals.

Asked about the shift on Saturday, Mr. Horgan gamely said he had been there at least once around the start of the campaign. “We drove through it today and I saw a lot of orange signs,” he said.

BC Liberal and NDP leaders talk about housing with The Globe (The Globe and Mail)

But left unsaid is the pressing reality for leaders of the three major parties – Mr. Horgan, BC Liberal Leader Christy Clark and Andrew Weaver of the BC Green Party.

Explainer: Everything you need to know about the B.C. election platforms

With voting three days away, pragmatism matters in campaign travel, and the leaders are going where their presence can make a difference in swinging support their way.

With just three days of campaigning left, Ms. Clark spent Saturday shoring up Liberal-held ridings around Metro Vancouver. Three of her stops were in ridings that the Liberals won by less than 5 per cent in 2013 – in what is expected to be a close contest on Tuesday, these seats will hold the key to victory.

Ms. Clark is seeking to win a second mandate, which would make her the first female premier in Canada to win more than one election.

During a campaign stop at a Burnaby bakery, Ms. Clark tried her hand at cupcake decorating. Looking at her less-than-perfect product, she remarked: “Hopefully I won’t be looking for another job any time soon.”

Ms. Clark detoured from her campaign earlier in the day to visit the flood-stricken community of Cache Creek in B.C.’s interior, but then returned to pick up the campaign starting in Port Moody-Coquitlam, a swing riding the NDP desperately needs to pick up if they are to defeat the Liberals on May 9.

The Liberal incumbent, Linda Reimer, appears to be in a close race – she won by just 437 votes in 2013. The riding has been Liberal territory since 1996, with the exception of the 2012 byelection won by a popular New Democrat, the former mayor of Port Moody. Ms. Clark has made repeated stops in this riding to combat the New Democrat push here.

Ms. Clark skipped the speeches and instead served up ice cream, alongside her son Hamish, at a Port Moody shop. Outside, her supporters cheered alongside a cluster of NDP supporters waving orange campaign signs for their candidate, Rick Glumac.

Although she has stuck to a consistent message about jobs and the economy throughout the campaign, in the final days of the four-week effort, she has emphasized the threats posed to the province’s economic success. She has warned the NDP is planning stealth tax hikes, and she has played up the Canada-U.S. softwood lumber dispute as a risk to British Columbian jobs.

In another riding identified as a “must-win” by the NDP, Burnaby North, Ms. Clark visited a string of bakeries, butcher shops and delicatessens. In this riding, Liberal Richard Lee had a margin of victory in 2013 of just 2.9 per cent. He is running against the NDP’s Janet Routledge for a second time.

The New Democrats have set their sights on suburban ridings such as this one as the path to victory, tapping into public frustration about the lack of affordable housing and the growing gap of wealth inequality.

But on the weekend, Mr. Horgan was in B.C.’s interior. He skipped Kelowna, but the NDP Leader went to Summerland in the riding of Penticton, which the Liberals won by six percentage points in 2013, and Boundary-Similkameen, where the gap between the winning Liberals and the NDP was eight points.

Asked about the logic, Mr. Horgan told reporters that he was going into those ridings to do what he could to bolster NDP campaigns, given the 2013 results.

“That’s the whole point, man,” a beaming Mr. Horgan told a news conference in Vernon.

Mr. Horgan’s Vernon presence in the campaign office of Vernon-Monashee New Democrat Barry Dorval was a less easily explained measure.

In 2013, the Liberals won with 46 per cent of votes, to 34 per cent for the New Democrats.

As elsewhere, Mr. Horgan laid out an appeal to disaffected Liberals, undecideds and members of the BC Green Party. To the Greens, in particular, he said the New Democrats were on the same page. He has cited such issues as electoral reform and stopping the expansion of the Trans-Mountain pipeline between Alberta and the Lower Mainland.

During a Vancouver Island campaign stop in Nanaimo on Friday, a similar appeal brought Mr. Weaver to the NDP venue, and the Green Leader effectively denounced Mr. Horgan’s bid for Green support.

Mr. Horgan was in Okanagan after a Friday spent on Vancouver Island, trying to rally and consolidate support in an area of B.C. that has been an NDP stronghold – one with seats the party will need in its tally as it makes a bid next week to win its first provincial election since 1996.

Mr. Dorval, a teacher, told reporters that he faces a tough battle in his Liberal stronghold riding, and that some Liberals may be willing on Tuesday to bail on their party but would only swing to the Greens – not as far as the NDP.

Mr. Dorval said he is pulling support from students and their parents he has dealt with in his 18 years as a teacher in Vernon – support he hopes will help him win on Tuesday.

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