Let's all welcome John Horgan to his new role as the leader of B.C. New Democrats, a job so coveted that no one ran against him for the position. It's unclear whether he stepped forward when asked or whether the entire caucus except for him stepped back when volunteers were sought.
To be fair, Horgan, the MLA for Juan de Fuca, did step up and it wasn't cheap, either. How strange that the party that prides itself on representing B.C.'s working class required a $25,000 non-refundable deposit for the privilege of running to lead it. Anyhow, Horgan put his money down, nobody else did and now he's in charge.
Horgan succeeds Adrian Dix, who will go down in provincial political history as the author of the Kinder Surprise, his Earth Day pronouncement that he opposed the twinning of the Kinder Morgan pipeline linking Alberta to Vancouver. The problem was that Kinder Morgan hadn't even submitted its proposal yet and suddenly Dix, a mile out in front of Liberal leader Christy Clark in the opinion polls at the time, made himself look just like the anti-business, just-say-no tree-hugging radical the Liberals had been saying he was.
Dix's comments that day erased his support across the Interior and among the undecided voters who had been considering giving the NDP another chance after being in opposition for 12 years.
That's the legacy Horgan will spend most of his time trying to live down for the next three years. Horgan will go blue in the face in his efforts to convince B.C. residents what he wants them to believe he is not (rabble-rousing trade unionist, socialist, hard-core environmentalist) and what he wants them to believe he is (trustworthy, accommodating, open to new ideas and business).
The biggest challenge Horgan faces, however, is not among the electorate but within his own party. There is a large section of the B.C. NDP who favour principle over pragmatism and would rather remain true to their ideals at all costs, even if that means being forever in opposition and out of power. This wing of the part bleeds orange and form the core of the group that attracts about one-third of the votes each election.
But if Horgan is serious about forming an NDP government in 2017, he needs get past that one-third. He needs to show both the public and his own party that he is open to resource development projects, as long as everyone benefits and the environmental effects are mitigated, and he will spend tax dollars carefully, even if that requires him to tell teachers and nurses where they can stick their contract demands.
Dix was afraid of the hard-left and environmental wing of his party who were threatening to vote for the Green Party. He appeased a handful of those people and alienated the political centre in the process. It's these people Horgan has to be willing to stand up to and, if necessary, let go. They are willing to throw their own party and everyone else's political goals to the wolves for a short-sighted win on their one-issue agendas.
The easy way for Horgan to confront these folks head-on is with the simple question "how badly do you want to govern?"
To do so would to borrow a page out of the Stephen Harper playbook. What Harper realized, that Preston Manning didn't, was that the hard right-wing social conservatives in the party that wanted abortion, capital punishment and opposition to gay marriage as key planks of the party platform needed to be told to get lost. Take your votes to the fringe parties if those issues mean more to you than jobs, taxes and health care.
In other words, he stopped listening to the radicals.
Pretending that everyone's opinion actually matters, Dix listened to his party's radicals and it cost him the premier's chair.
Horgan shouldn't make the same mistake. He should stand up to the environmentalists in his party and tell them that while he cares deeply about trees, clean water and endangered species, his primary focus is working people, fair wages and a strong economy.
If asked to choose, his answer should be that we should always work towards having both of those things but, at the end of the day, trees, bears and fish don't vote.
