The path for the B.C. NDP back to government has always been a simple, two-part process.
First, the party needs to tell its own story and pump up its own agenda, rather than just demonizing the Liberals and getting defensive about the 1990s. Second, the progressives need to stop alienating mainstream voters with their holier-than-thou, our way or the highway rants.
Under Adrian Dix, the NDP did neither and managed to blow a huge lead in the opinion polls. Dix and the party also made the mistake of considering Christy Clark a lightweight. Members of her own party did that and she still won the leadership. The NDP seemed to think that because they were smarter, they would win the election but by not trying to convince the electorate they were smarter, they just made themselves look dumb.
It's unclear whether the NDP has learned its lesson after the disastrous results of last spring's provincial election. There are still public proclamations from party faithful about how stupid the Liberals are in general and the premier in particular. Yet that doesn't seem to be the view of John Horgan.
The new party boss and Leader of the Opposition, Horgan seems to be all the things Dix wasn't. Dix was the fidgety, absent-minded professor who could be easily sidetracked into talking about his blue-sky ideas about government's role in fixing social inequality and his collection of ties that all have NDP orange in them. While not as sharp-tongued as a Glen Clark or a Dave Barrett, Dix was fiercely partisan, an old-school academic and labour NDP stalwart.
Horgan, however, is more of a Mike Harcourt. Thirty months before the next election, Horgan is touring the province, including places like Prince George, which once voted NDP but haven't done so in more than 15 years. His jackets and ties are business conservative, his voice calm and easy, never strident. Even when thrown a softball by a reporter, he doesn't attack Clark directly. Even when given the opportunity to spin Prince George's municipal election - where the North Central Labour Council's endorsements for mayor and council were all elected - into a sign of the changing political tides, Horgan dismissed the whole notion of a vote at one level of government being indicative of what could happen in the next vote for another level of government.
Horgan, like Harcourt before him, is working hard to be seen as a reasonable man when it comes to the economy, organized labour, resource development, taxation and the environment. During his exclusive conversation Monday with The Citizen, Horgan made a point of stating he holds different views from the progressives in his caucus and his party on a number of these issues and is willing to stand up to them.
That's intentional candor from Horgan. He wants people to know he is in charge and while he will listen to the progressives and dissenting voices in his party, he will not let them undercut yet another leader and derail yet another campaign.
This is not just a new NDP leader saying what it takes to win office. Stephen Harper and Christy Clark have mastered the art of winning and holding office by unifying supporters and pushing the radicals off to the side, still under the umbrella but far enough from the centre of the action to minimize the damage they can do.
Horgan laid it out plain, when he said he's going to attack the mythology around the NDP not with logic and facts and arguments but with "personal relationships," built with conversations, a calm voice and a listening ear. Rather than coming to Prince George with all of the answers, he's coming with a basic question - how does the NDP fail to win in a heavily unionized community, where public sector employment in health and education is a major driver of the local economy?
The answer is easy - too many residents simply don't trust the NDP to govern.
Horgan is taking the first early steps to restoring that trust. If he can stay on course and keep the lunatic fringe in his midst at bay, his time and energy invested in making the rounds in 2014 and 2015 could pay off in a big way in May 2017.
There's a lot that will happen between now and then, of course, but Horgan seems to be charting the right direction, one handshake, one meeting, one social event, at a time, to build back that trust in the NDP, starting with himself.
