NDP provincial secretary Jan O'Brien admits there's no money in a by-election readiness fund

by Charlie Smith on July 13th, 2011 at 3:35 PM

NDP provincial secretary Jan O'Brien sent out another fundraising letter today. It revealed that the party was in not in a financial position to fight a by-election campaign in Vancouver-Fraserview, had B.C. Liberal Kash Heed been forced to resign.

O'Brien's letter appears below:

In May, we fought a strong campaign during the by-election against Christy Clark in Vancouver-Point Grey. Losing by just 595 votes, our campaign was nearly able to stop Christy Clark in her tracks.

Kash Heed the cheating Liberal from Fraserview went to the BC Supreme Court and admitted that his campaign overspent the spending limits in the last election.

Heed admitted that he had spent more than he was allowed to. This was one of the tightest races in the 2009 election and the spending made a huge difference, paying for a vicious attack leaflet smearing the NDP.

This cheating saw Kash Heed win by just 748 votes.

For over a year, we had been raising money for our by-election readiness fund. We were able to spend tens of thousands of dollars on the Point Grey by-election campaign as a result of generous contributions from folks like you.

If the courts had declared Kash Heed’s seat vacant we would be into another by-election with our readiness fund at $0.

Given how close we have now come to a second by-election, it seems prudent to replenish the fund by asking you to make a donation, today, while the story of Kash Heed is still fresh in our minds.

Even if we can raise just $5000, today, that will ensure that if a by-election does happen suddenly we will be able to immediately rent an office and install phones the day a by-election is called.

Please make a tax deductible contribution of $40.00 to our by-election readiness fund, right now online.

-Jan

JAN O'BRIEN

PROVINCIAL SECRETARY

Comments

4 Comments

LostMyGlasses

Jul 13, 2011 at 4:39pm

If the NDP ever get an "Obama" like fundraising machine going, get into government, and change fundraising rules to exclude corporate funding, they will have a much better chance of winning more elections.

guyanzhi

Jul 13, 2011 at 6:06pm

Mr. Gabriel Yiu was the one who made the 2009 election race so tight. I look forward to seeing Gabriel to be the NDP candidate for Fraserview for either the possible by-election or the next election and am happy to make donation to support Gabriel to run again. But before declaring who is the candidate of Fraserview, how can you expect people make donations to just support any NDP candidate? After all the person is most important, not the party.

Glenn

Jul 16, 2011 at 9:17am

Time to ban corporate, business and union donations, including labour releases for all elections. The federal level has done it, don't understand why it can't be done on the provincial and municipal levels.