For months, Dan Brooks and Rick Peterson have crisscrossed the province making their best pitch to members of the B.C. Conservative party.
On Saturday, one will emerge as the next leader of a party that each believes is on the verge of a breakthrough, despite only picking up about five per cent of the vote in last spring's provincial election.
Brooks, the owner of a Vanderhoof-area wilderness camp outfitter, and Peterson, a Vancouver-based businessman, have all but finished the campaigning phase of the race and are now busy mobilizing their vote in advance of the the weekend convention in Richmond.
The majority of the votes are expected to be mailed in prior to the gathering, but there will be chance to cast a ballot in person as well.
"We started hitting the phones really hard, we were calling around to various areas of the province calling people to make sure they got their votes in the mail before the weekend so they could get down and get counted," Brooks said. "I think most of the people have voted by now."
While there are certainly policy differences between the two contenders, Brooks expects the race will boil down to who is in the best position to administer the party and grow it into what he hopes will be an electoral force to rival the governing Liberals.
The Conservatives were over 20 per cent in some public opinion polls in 2012 but failed to elect a single MLA when voters went to the polls last May.
Brooks is basing his campaign on election readiness - he wants candidates nominated and a platform in place a full year out from the next scheduled vote.
"We have a big hurdle with the electorate of British Columbia," he said. "We have to prove we can govern ourselves so that we can prove we can govern the the province and until we reach a point where we can govern ourselves competently British Columbians aren't going to trust us."
Brooks said he believes it should be up to the grassroots members of the party to nail down specific policy planks, although he will advocate for his own ideas as leader.
Peterson, who has the support of outgoing party leader John Cummins and the four most recent party presidents, has touted his fundraising experience and business background throughout the campaign.
Unlike Brooks, Peterson said a strong policy background is important in a new leader. His three main campaign planks have centered around tax fairness, support for the resource sector and accountability.
"The leader is not the administrator, we have a board who are the administrators," he said. "The role of the leader is to lead, to have policy ideas and raise the profile of the party and raise money for the party so that we are a credible alternative."
The party is using a weighted points system to select the leader. Each of the province's 85 electoral districts can be worth up to 100 points, but ridings with fewer than 100 party members are worth fewer points. The points system makes it tough to predict a winner, but both candidates are optimistic heading into the convention.
Brooks said he has sold about 300 new party memberships over the course of the campaign and believes he has won over many of the existing party members. Peterson wasn't willing to disclose how many membership he's sold - "we'll find out Saturday, won't we," he said - but is confident he'll come out victorious thanks to support of new and existing members.
For his part, Brooks doesn't expect a close race.
"I think I'm going to run away with it," he said. "But we haven't done any polls, all that I know is based on the phone calls we've made."
