New Democrats going hard on Christy Clark in 2017 election, says B.C. NDP MLA

When asked how the next election campaign will be different from the last, a B.C. NDP MLA left no doubt about what to expect.

According to George Heyman, New Democrats won’t be soft on Christy Clark when the B.C. Liberal premier seeks a fresh mandate in 2017.

“We’re going to go after the Liberals’ record of inaction on important priorities of British Columbians. We’ll go after it hard,” Heyman told the Straight in a recent interview.

Does that mean a negative campaign?

“We won’t run a dirty campaign, but being hard on the issues and hard on the record of the government isn’t negative,” Heyman responded.

The Vancouver-Fairview representative noted: “That’s what politics is about, and that’s our job.”

In 2013, then B.C. NDP leader Adrian Dix insisted on a positive campaign, a strategy that a review panel — struck by the party after its election loss — determined to be a “lethal” blunder.

“Christy Clark was able, either through surrogates or through her own campaign, to attack the NDP and raise doubts in the minds of voters,” the panel wrote in its report.

The panel also observed: “The NDP, on the other hand, limited itself to talking about the details in its platform and not taking head on—at least not until the last week of the campaign—the BC Liberal track record or the more fundamental ballot question of whether the BC Liberals deserved another term as government.”

The B.C. NDP hasn’t held power since 2001.