Question — which election campaign are we in the midst of at the moment?
Answer — all four of them.
It’s hard to keep them all straight, when a federal election (with all the attendant media coverage) is underway, with voting day set for May 2. At the same time, the provincial NDP have just selected Adrian Dix as their new leader.
Now that her main opponents actually have a leader, Premier Christy Clark is planning an election to either confirm that she has a mandate from the public, or turn power over to Dix and the NDP. That election will likely take place this fall (perhaps in September).
But first she has another election to deal with — the mail-in ballot on the HST. Those ballots will go out in the mail in June, and must be returned in July. In the meantime, there will be lots of talk about the pros and cons of the tax.
The outcome of that vote, made necessary by the overwhelming success of the anti-HST petition last year, will go a long way to determining what could happen to Clark and the BC Liberals.
But there’s yet another election to think about, and it became a whole lot more interesting with the announcement Friday that Jack Froese is seeking to become mayor of Langley Township.
There is no love lost between Mayor Rick Green and the majority of council, sometimes referred to as “the gang of six” by their most vocal opponents. This animosity has spilled over on many occasions at council meetings, and in some other community endeavours.
Froese referred to this in his announcement, saying that there has been “two and a half years of animosity.”
Froese has no political experience, but the past two Township mayors had no direct experience in Township politics either.
Green was elected to one term on Delta council in the late 1980s, and ran unsuccessfully as a Social Credit candidate in the 1991 provincial election. Prior to running for mayor in 2008, he had been out of politics for 17 years, and he had no Langley Township political experience.
His predecessor, Kurt Alberts, had never run for office, prior to running and becoming mayor in 1999. He had served as the Township’s director of planning for many years and was intimately familiar with how the Township operated — but from the staff side of the equation.
The big challenge when the municipal election finally rolls around in November will be to motivate people to vote. After going through two and possibly three votes by that time, many people will be tired of voting.
The turnout in municipal elections is traditionally quite low, and it has been going down and down in the Township since 1999, when there was an unusually high 43 per cent turnout. In recent elections, it has hovered around 18 to 20 per cent.
While there are many people who are motivated to vote because of their strong feelings about Green or other members of council, the vast majority of Township residents are disengaged. It will be very hard to get many of these people to vote, given that they usually don’t bother to, and they will have been through two or three votes already this year.