Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Conservation Voters of BC and the Leadership campaigns

The Conservation Voters of BC is an umbrella organization for many of the mainstream environmental organizations in BC.   During elections they have endorsed candidates as being worth voting for or not.  They have had a strong bias towards supporting New Democrats but choose one or two people from other parties to give the organization the patina of non-partisanship.  

They often choose candidates that are clearly going to win and then claim they have a role in getting the person elected.   In past elections I am not convinced they made any difference in anyone getting elected.   I think this is because the group is not a grassrooots organization but part of the professional environmental movement who are not very populist at all.   But enough with my critique of the organization.

They are now trying to get people involved with the NDP and Liberal leadership races by joining the parties.  I find this a very interesting move on their part as the public has more of an influence on BC politics through these leadership races than through the regular political process.    At the moment there are between 50,000 and 60,000 people in BC that are members of the NDP or the Liberals.   These people will choose the next premier and who will be the premier after the 2013 election.

Since the NDP cut off is in less than a week, it will be interesting to see how much they promote people joining the Liberals to have an influence in that race.

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