Vicki Huntington – Elected – Analysis
Posted June 2, 2009 by Sacha Peter - Link
Category: Analysis
Comments (3)
The judicial recount is over, and Vicki Huntington has been confirmed as MLA of Delta South, defeating Attorney General Wally Oppal by 32 votes. Huntington will be the first independently elected MLA in British Columbia in two generations.
It will be interesting to see what impact she will have on the legislature. Some (mainly BC Liberal proponents) say none. I will discuss the various angles that have been discussed elsewhere by commenters on this website.
First is the issue whether Huntington will cross the floor or not. The chance of Huntington joining the NDP or Green party would be close to zero as this is the opposite side of her political spectrum. As for the BC Liberals, it would be highly unlikely for this to happen as long as Gordon Campbell is the leader – both would know that if she joined the BC Liberal caucus, she would get ’swallowed up’, and she would be making a lot of enemies in the process (i.e. a good deal of the 10,000 people that voted for her in the election). If there was a leadership change, the political calculus would change somewhat, but I would still regard a floor crossing as unlikely to occur. The BC Conservatives would also be extremely unlikely, as they are not sufficiently organized (or credible).
Huntington would have known that if she accepted the BC Liberal nomination in the lead-up to the 2009 election that she would have cruised to victory, with a good shot at cabinet. It would be absurd for her to go through the effort as getting elected as an independent, only to be offered a cabinet position if she would cross the floor.
The summary is that I think she will remain independent, at least until the 2013 election.
One remote scenario that has a 0.1-0.5% chance of occurring is that Gordon Campbell would ask Huntington to serve in cabinet as an independent. Note this is highly unlikely. It would have been likely had there been a 42 BC Liberal, 42 NDP standing after the election.
One of the arguments that the BC Liberal proponents in the riding had was that if Wally Oppal was elected that he would be able to provide cabinet representation to the region. This argument did not make sense, due to the fact that Oppal was in cabinet previously. It also would not make sense in the 2009-2013 period, mainly because of Oppal’s age – it would have been very highly likely that he would have retired in the 2013 election – he will be 73 years old in 2013. There would have been zero accountability, mainly because the threat of not being re-elected would be gone.
Recall that during the lead-up to Election 2009 that Oppal was waffling on whether he wanted to run again or not, and even went past the party’s deadline for incumbent MLAs to officially declare whether they were or not. This could have been a media stunt by Oppal (to gather more attention for himself, as he loves dealing with the media), or it could have been a legitimate decision whether he wanted to run again. It could be possible that the “punishment” for this was to move his seat from Vancouver-Fraserview (which would have been a probable victory) to Delta South (again, a probable victory, but lesser so due to Vicki Huntington). The political calculus worked for the BC Liberal party – it would have been more probable that Huntington would have won against a no-named candidate for Delta South than Oppal, at the risk of Oppal losing to Huntington.
During the legislature, Huntington will undoubtedly be seen by the media as the centre-right opposition critic, although she will not want that role – she will want to be seen as the critic for Delta South’s interests. She faces a problem – in order to get media attention, she will need to discuss broad provincial issues, most of which will have little to do with Delta South specifically. If she discusses Delta South specific material, she will not get media attention. There is a fine balancing act for her to perform. Since she has a massive amount of political experience and intelligence (seen in the choice to run independently), she should be able to figure this out.
An interesting angle for the 2013 election is one of political financing – independent candidates cannot issue tax receipts for political donations until the writ has been dropped and they are confirmed candidates for an election. This means that most fundraising has to be in a compressed period of time, and it makes it much more difficult for independent candidates to get elected. One advantage of incumbency that Huntington will undoubtedly take advantage of is setting up a registered constituency association in Delta South – while independent candidates cannot issue tax receipts until the writ period, registered constituency associations can. Independent MLAs can establish their own constituency associations when they are elected.
This means if Huntington remains independent, she would be able to be able to issue tax receipts for donations received after she forms a constituency association, and be able to retain those funds for the 2013 election. This would give her a credible shot of retaining her seat if she decides to run again in four years – she would be able to raise sufficient funds.
In terms of 2013 positioning, the government will want to “punish” the people of Delta South, mainly to prove to them that electing an independent candidate is bad for their political (and inevitably financial) health. They will try to do this in ways that are subtle and not terribly overt (akin to the NDP’s routing of the Millennium Line through NDP-only ridings in the 1990’s), but they will try to send a message in 2013 to voters that “if you keep on electing an independent, you will get nothing”. It will be interesting to see whether the voters will accept the implied “bribe”, or whether they will react by sending Huntington back to Victoria, assuming she runs again. If the government bullies too hard, they will receive a backlash from the voters. If they shower voters with gifts, it might make Huntington look good by “delivering the bacon”. There is a middle ground between the carrot and the stick that may work on voters.
One obvious way for the government to punish Huntington is to change election financing legislation to forbid independent MLAs from issuing political tax receipts from received donations (just like in the federal system where independent MPs have no ability to raise money in an effective manner). Such an overt act isn’t beyond the ability of the government, as exhibited by the Election Act financing amendments (the so-called “gag law”) brought in 2008.
Finally, the message that an independent candidate elected to Victoria might send, assuming Huntington does a competent and credible job, might be that more credible independent candidates might stand for election in 2013, and the public might consider them more strongly (notice the string of “might”s in that sentence!) The independents that got significant vote counts in 2009 were Huntington (Delta South, Delta Council) and Arthur Hadland (Peace River North, Peace River Regional District), who were the only independent candidates with elected office experience.
I agree with everything you sated except when yo said that the chance of here joining the green is zero. It really should be noted that her policies align quite symmetrically. Plus the number of Green votes in the riding has dropped up substantially since 01, whos numbers have gone up since then? You do the math
Taylor: The green vote was so high in 2001 because the NDP were so unpopular. The NDP only won 21.6% of the vote province-wide that year, and much of the NDP vote went Green (12.4%). In 2005, Green vote dropped province-wide to 9.2% as the NDP recovered, and this year it dropped even further to 8.1%. In Delta South, many people voted for the Greens in 2001 and/or 2005 as a “none of the above” vote. Many of these people realized that Independent “none of the above” candidate Vicki Huntington might actually have a shot, since she actually came close last time and was getting a lot of media attention.
As a Federal Conservative, Vicki Huntington is more likely to remain an independent, join the BC Conservatives, or join the BC Liberals than the Greens. There is no chance of her joining the NDP though.
I disagree with Sacha that she would not join the Conservatives because they are not sufficiently organized or credible. If she joined them, they would gain credibility and attract better people. As the only elected member, she could define the party, attract like-minded people fed up with the BC Liberals, win the leadership, and build a credible organization. A lot of conservative BC Liberals feel that the party is moving too far to the Centre, and/or just don’t like the idea of supporting a “Liberal” party.
In 1986, the BC Liberals under Art Lee weren’t really credible either, receiving 8.5% on average in the ridings in which they ran (I cheated here: this number is a ballpark calculated as overall popular vote / # ridings where they ran * total # of ridings = 6.74 / 55 * 69 = 8.5%.) The BC Conservatives received 7.32% this election in the ridings in which they ran, which is not far off what the Liberals received in 1986. And yet in 1991, the BC Liberals came from nowhere to win the official opposition.
I think that if Vicki wanted to be premier (or at least dismantle the Campbell coalition), she could pull it off, but it would be a lot of work. By fighting hard in the legislature for 4 years like Joy MacPhail and Jenny Kwan (Vicki is a powerful speaker), she could sympathy from the right-of-centre voters of BC. If she joined the BC Conservatives at some point, much of that sympathy would transfer to the party as well. If she were allowed to join the 2013 leaders debate between Campbell, James, and Sterk, (or their successors) she could easily outclass them all like Wilson did to Johnston and Harcourt in 1991.
For voters who find the BC Liberals too centrist, this is a possible 8-year plan to get BC on the “right” track. However, breaking up the coalition is risky, and would likely result in an NDP government (possibly even 2 terms). This would require a LOT of work, and Huntington is not as young as Wilson was in 1991. She might not even have any ambitions to be premier either. I’m not saying that any of this is likely, but I don’t think it is “extremely unlikely” either.
Your argument as to why she’d not join the BC Tories is that they are disorganized, IE they are a “loser party”; and thus, she’ll remain outside of party politics to 2013.
I don’t read it that way.
I see the 2009 BC Conservatives are a small party. Then again so were the BC Liberals in 1986, when they only got 6.7% of the vote (less then the 7.3% the BCC would have got, according to your math) All of a sudden they found a great leader and were expected to “win a few seats” in 1991 before the debate homerun.
The BC Conservatives might be nothing now, but they’ve placed themselves to become something. Lets assume for a moment that Iggy pop wins a majority somehow. There will be a lot of fairly right-wing BC Conservatives who will be on the opposition benches. Whoever takes over from Harper will almost certainly be more moderate – and many of the most right-wing conservatives don’t like Harper because they think he is too left wing! This will mean that one or two very right BC Conservative MP’s would get to choose between
A – Sitting as a powerless opposition backbencher in the scorned wing of the party for the next 5 years
or
B – Taking over the BC Conservative party (especially likely if more than one MP wants to go for it) and building it into a good party while still officially MP’s. Quitting a year or two before the 2013 election and making a good run for government.
If B happens, and I’m not saying it will, we will all of a sudden find a BC Conservative party with real support, experience, and strength. The pull for this Independent (who may well remain an independent for half the term or more) to join a “real” party on the right would be strong.
As they stand now, Huntington would only go over if she thought she could take over as party leader – and I don’t see that in her really – but politics change quickly, sometimes in as little as a few seconds – much like the debate “homeruns” of elections past.