A former prominent B.C. Green is questioning a claim by party leader Adriane Carr that a leadership race after she steps down later this year will excite new interest in the party.
“After seeing the excitement the Green party leadership race at the federal level generated, I am sure that we can attract new members to the party by holding a vibrant leadership contest with new faces,” Carr said in a September 24 statement announcing her decision to retire as leader.
Julian West, who quit the Greens after Carr’s allies assumed control at a convention in Squamish in early 2000, is now a New Democrat. But West told the Georgia Straight that he has no plans to rejoin the party now that Carr is departing and doesn’t think there will be an exodus from NDP ranks.
“I’m very comfortable with the ?party I’m in,” West said. “If you look at the members of Parliament that we’ve got on [Vancouver] Island, Jean Crowder and Denise Savoie are probably the greenest MPs in Canadian history.” Crowder is the NDP MP for Nanaimo-Cowichan and Savoie represents Victoria for the New Democrats.
“So there’s no reason anybody would leave the NDP at a time when we’re electing people like that,” West added.
West is a member of the executive of the provincial Cowichan-Ladysmith NDP riding association and the federal Nanaimo-?Cowichan riding association. Last year, he ran for the NDP nomination in Cowichan-Ladysmtih, losing to now-MLA Doug Routley.
He believes that Carr’s allies will continue to run the B.C. Greens. “I don’t think she’s relinquishing control of the party,” West said. “I don’t think there’s going to be any move by the party to try to reembrace all of the old people, or anything like that.”
On the list of possible candidates to succeed Carr, West says he expects to see the names of people close to Carr, such as former Green Vancouver school trustee Andrea Reimer.
“There’s a bit of a problem here, because there is no obvious person to run for leader of the party,” West said. “That ought to be a concern, because for the six years that Adriane’s been in control of the party, it’s all been about her. There hasn’t been any attempt to promote anybody else as a credible public persona.”
One possible candidate, West said, is Sonya Chandler, who was elected to the Victoria city council last November on a Green party ticket. Chandler could not be reached by the Straight’s deadline.
“What’s really going to be interesting about this leadership race is whether they want to continue with the kind of ‘take no prisoners’ approach that Adriane had or whether they want to sit down with other parties and try to work together,” West said. “It will be very interesting to see if somebody enters the race who is explicitly in favour of negotiating with the NDP.”
West said he believes Carr is headed to a post with the federal Green party.
“My expectation is that they’re going to invent some paid position that doesn’t currently exist with the federal party and she’s going to take it,” West said. “Why else would she quit?”
Victoria consultant Brad Zubyk, who was the NDP caucus communications director in the early 1990s, says there is no guarantee that a leadership race will change the party’s fortunes.
“We can all name leadership races where that worked out well, and we can all name leadership races where it didn’t work out well,” Zubyk said. “The B.C. Green party’s challenge is to find quality candidates for ?the leadership who exceed the ?public’s expectations.
“It’s very hard to attract people to a political party that’s without prospects,” Zubyk added.
Among the names of possible leadership candidates bandied about to date, none seems outstanding, he noted.
“We really have a collection of ex-candidates who have been defeated, in most cases multiple times, in their local ridings,” Zubyk said. “If they go out and pick a defeated candidate or a long-time activist, that’s a way of ensuring things will be worse without Adriane Carr. They need to reach out for someone that has a public profile, ideally someone who is not just associated with Green activism.”
Among the questions the party needs to answer is where it stands on the political spectrum, he said.
“Are they going to pull votes from the Liberals or the NDP?” Zubyk asked. “My sense is that Adriane Carr had the most appeal to people on the centre-left—and look where that got them.”