When Christy Clark was elected Liberal leader in March 2011, she - and the party - enjoyed a 43 per cent popularity rating in the polls. Fast forward to today and the picture is not so cheery. On July 10, pollster Angus Reid reported Clark and the Liberals are sitting at 23 per cent. By contrast, the NDP under leader Adrian Dix has a 45 per cent approval rating. More troublesome for the Liberals are the issue factors that favour the NDP. When asked which leader could best address health care, education, the economy and crime, respondents favoured Dix over Clark.
Not good news for the Liberals, even at his lowest point in the polls - nine per cent - former premier Gordon Campbell was seen by most British Columbians as the best leader to manage the economy.
So what makes Dix run? How has he managed to leap so far ahead in the last 16 months? There are a number of external reasons, but I sense a Dix makeover by the NDP and although New Democrats don't exactly include me in their particular loop, or loops, here's a theory consistent with NDP strategy.
To begin, I turn to Bill Tieleman. He's a strong supporter of the NDP, writes a left-wing blog and did communications work for Glen Clark when Clark was premier. I worked with Tieleman on both No to the Single Transferable Vote campaigns and have to say he's one of the best political strategists around.
I'm guessing that when Dix was elected NDP leader last year, Tieleman put together a number of focus groups and conducted polls to assess the public's opinion of Dix. I'm also guessing the responses on Dix came back ranging from, he's a kiddie's menu rendition of Glen Clark, to, he's an arrogant little snot. Just a hunch, but I bet I'm close.
So the Tieleman message to Dix was, you want to be premier, act like a premier. If anything, Dix is bright, he got the message and it shows. As an example, this spring, Liberal MLAs Kevin Krueger and Harry Bloy went way over the edge criticizing Dix for backdating a controversial letter while in the employ of then premier Glen Clark and for getting caught on the Sky Train without a ticket. Terms such as' "A pattern of dishonesty, cheating and deceit" were used.
To his credit, Dix did not respond. The facts in both cases are public knowledge and voters can make of them what they may, but when your opponents are in the mud, you'll only get equally dirty if you jump in with them.
In fact, and whether or not this is the Tieleman factor, Dix has made it clear he is going to stay away from personal attacks. Instead he's focusing on policy issues, rolling them out with some care but not promising a pre-election NDP campaign budget until early in 2013. Good strategy; when a government is falling, the best tactic is to just get out of the way.
Over in the Liberal corner, things don't look that good. In fact since both leaders won their respective convections in the spring of 2011, the polls have reversed. Bogged down by the HST issue, a resurgence of questions surrounding BCR and a general inability to focus on any political grabbers, Premier Clark is waging an uphill war for the hearts and minds of the provincial electorate. Clark has also found it difficult to articulate what she wants to do, which is no doubt why respondents to polls see her as being less able than Dix to manage the economy.
Looking at both major B.C. parties, it's clear that while they both went for a leadership makeover in 2011, only the NDP succeeded.
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Bell, Bond and beyond.
To their credit, local Liberal MLAs Pat Bell and Shirley Bond have announced they will run in 2013. Bell summed it up well, saying, "The stakes are way too high this time around." Bond has a solid record in cabinet serving as Minster of Justice and Attorney General. An enormous responsibility, normally split into two ministries. Pat Bell has had a few inertia issues with the Prince George Wood Innovation and Design Centre and managing a restructuring program at Catalyst Paper on Vancouver Island, but both concerns seem to have been resolved, at least for now.
Incumbents normally fare well in the polls, but I've sailed into a dropping political tide and it's not easy. We'll give both Bell and Bond full marks for courage.
