When federal New Democrats hold leadership races, they're usually dull affairs because the candidates are invariably polite with one another in public.

Their fights usually focus on the issues that divide them rather than the personalities.

The only serious exception I can remember was way back in 1989 when things got testy between the Audrey McLaughlin and Dave Barrett camps.

Even when the unpredictable and often-controversial Svend Robinson competed for the leadership six years later, the politeness continued. The long-time Burnaby MP was leading after the first ballot when he conceded to Alexa McDonough.

Robinson even introduced a motion to make her leader, shocking many of his supporters.

It's not always so pleasant on the right side of the spectrum. Perhaps the most extreme example was the battle between Donald Trump and his opponents for the Republican presidential nomination.

But even here in B.C., things can get chippy on the right.

The new B.C. Liberal leader won't be crowned until February 3 but already there's an attack site and a puerile Twitter account targeting the presumed front runner, former Surrey mayor Dianne Watts.

The allwhois.org website reveals that the wafflingwatts.ca website was registered by Go Daddy Domains Canada, Inc. It still hasn't been fully loaded, as you can see by the image above.

This is one of the early messages on the Twitter account.

https://twitter.com/WafflingWatts/status/934196649953443840

Nobody knows who created this account.

But it's worth noting that the B.C. Liberal race has attracted long-time hardball players.

They include former finance minister and house leader Mike de Jong (first elected in 1994) and Andrew Wilkinson, a former corporate litigator and former president of the party. And B.C. Liberal supporters have made use of mocking websites for years.

Who can forget the sayanythingjohn site that was created before the last election?

Then there was the full-on B.C. Liberal assault on former B.C. Conservative leader John Cummins.

This helped consign his party to the dust heap before the 2013 provincial campaign even began.

The most notorious example was the nasty, Republican-style hit on a former NDP leader, Adrian Dix, before the 2013 election.

This is how some B.C. Liberals play the political game. Often these tactics have worked for them.

So we shouldn't be surprised that some might be tempted to employ a similar approach against their own in a party leadership race.

This is how things work in a party in which public policies are not as important as grabbing power.

B.C. Liberals have rarely been known for demonstrating a great deal of interest in the biggest issues facing society.

Among them, I include such things as tackling inequality, addressing monumental environmental challenges, applying peer-reviewed science in responding to the overdose crisis, advancing reconciliation with First Nations, or getting beyond a 1950s mindset in enhancing the effectiveness of the transportation system.

For the most part, the B.C. Liberals are just not a very curious lot.

Sure, there have been exceptions in the past, such as former cabinet ministers George Abbott, Gordon Hogg, and Moira Stilwell. None of them are running this time around.

The only leadership candidates who seem to be coming up with a multitude of fresh ideas now are the quixotic and open-minded Sam Sullivan and the former transportation minister, Todd Stone.

Sullivan's planks include some of the usual libertarian drivel, such as privatizing the Liquor Distribution Branch and more privatization of health care. And he's promised to name the tight-fisted Mike de Jong as finance minister if he's elected leader, which is not good news for the province's poorest residents.

But Sullivan has demonstrated a keen interest in addressing the overdose crisis in ways that no other candidates are ready to publicly contemplate.

Another candidate, Vancouver-Langara MLA Michael Lee, has proposed phasing out plastic grocery bags.

That should have been done years ago, given the mounting evidence of harm that plastic is causing marine life, but it wasn't even on the radar of the B.C. Liberal party.

Wilkinson's "Where I stand section" on his website offers the usual B.C. Liberal banalities. He wants to privatize government-owned liquor stores (as if that's the most pressing issue facing society).

De Jong's website is similarly bereft on public policy. He's advocating all-day kindergarten for four-year-olds and providing incentives for local governments that speed up the rezoning process for smaller housing projects.

Watts promotes herself as a "team builder with a passion for big ideas", but there is a noticeable absence of them on her website. She's talked about turning cannabis revenue over to local governments.

The B.C. Liberals still like to think of themselves as B.C.'s natural governing party. And they were, for the most part, dating back to the early 1950s, if you count the B.C. Liberals as a mere extension of the Social Credit party.

They believe that their record is enough to bring them back into power.

But if their leadership candidates don't start demonstrating a greater interest in addressing the biggest issues of our times, they can't assume that the voters will naturally plop them back into office in the future.

In Vancouver, the NPA was the natural governing party from 1937 to 2002, with a rare exception during the early 1970s.

But the NPA has held control of council only once since then. That was by a razor-thin one-vote majority almost a decade ago.

The NPA lost touch with the issues that were most compelling to Vancouverites, including acting responsibly on environmental matters. Civic policies to promote food security were ridiculed in NPA campaign ads. And the party has paid a huge price.

The B.C. Liberals could face a similar fate if they don't up their game in this leadership race.

Nasty attack websites can elicit lots of laughs. They might also blunt the momentum of one of the candidates. But what are these putative leaders doing to convince millennials that they give a hoot about the climate crisis?

In many people's minds, the B.C. Liberals are more interested in securing power than in solving vexing problems facing communities across the province.

In this leadership race, the public hasn't seen a great deal of evidence that this has changed in any dramatic way.

That's the biggest issue facing the party. And that's why voters are just not that engaged in the contest to succeed Christy Clark.