There's good news and bad news for Dianne Watts and her bold bid to win the B.C. Liberal leadership.
The good news: She's way ahead in a new opinion poll (that she commissioned herself). The bad news: She just lost the support of a key party strategist, who quit and said her campaign is a mess.
Let's break down those poll results first, and then former supporter Sukhi Sandhu will explain how Watts is letting her advantages go to waste, and why he decided to bail on her.
The poll commissioned by the Watts campaign suggests the former Surrey mayor and Conservative MP is a clear first choice for leader among Liberal Party members.
The poll, by the Innovative Research Group, puts Watts on top with 29-per-cent support among party members eligible to vote in the leadership contest.
That's 18 percentage points ahead of former Liberal cabinet ministers Todd Stone and Mike de Jong, both tied at 11 per cent. (Check the entire poll online at www.theprovince.com).
Any poll that favours the candidate who commissioned it is bound to be viewed skeptically by that candidate's opponents, of course. And this one is no different.
"I think we've all learned to take opinion polls with a big dose of salt because of the way they're conducted these days," said leadership rival Andrew Wilkinson, who scored just six per cent in the poll.
De Jong's campaign was dismissive too, pointing to an earlier poll that put de Jong in first place.
But the Watts camp is still thrilled with the new numbers, pointing out the polling company is run by respected pollster and analyst Greg Lyle, and was based on random interviews with 305 party members. It's considered accurate within six percentage points, the pollster said.
The poll showed Watts with a commanding lead among female party members (33 per cent, 20 points ahead of de Jong) and she scored strongly in all regions of the province.
Watts did well among older party members, too, but dropped into a tie with Stone among younger members aged 18 to 44.
Watts, mayor of Surrey for nine years before she became a federal MP, is an outsider in the B.C. Liberal Party race, with not a single Liberal MLA supporting her campaign.
But maybe that's not such a bad thing, since the poll suggests most party members would like a fresh start after the departure of former premier Christy Clark, who quit as leader in July.
The poll asked whether a senior cabinet minister in the former Liberal government would be the best choice for leader or "someone who was not part of the previous Liberal government and brings a fresh perspective."
The result: "Senior minister" received 33-per-cent support, while "someone new" received 46 per cent. The rest had no opinion.
Advantage Watts. But the former Surrey mayor was careful not to gloat.
"Polls are interesting, but I'm focused on visiting ridings across B.C. and talking to B.C. Liberals, and all voters, about issues that matter to them," she said.
Sounds pretty good, but a key Liberal Party insider says all is not well in the Watts camp.
Which brings us to that bad news for Watts: the resignation of Sukhi Sandhu from her campaign.
Sandhu is a supremely connected Indo-Canadian businessman in Surrey who is regarded as a powerful backroom string-puller for any politician hoping to get support among South Asian voters.
The South Asian community is highly engaged politically, and savvy B.C. politicians know a guy like Sandhu can sign up a lot of new party members and raise a lot of money.
But now Sandhu has bolted from Watts's campaign, saying her team has failed to connect to B.C.'s South Asian community, especially in Surrey.
"It's a critical mistake because that's where the Liberals lost a lot of votes in the last election," Sandhu told me. "We have to win those seats back. But the Watts campaign is a mess. They are failing to connect with the South Asian community."
Sandhu said the final straw was a recent leadership debate in Surrey, where he pleaded with Watts to focus on issues critical to the South Asian community, including the overcrowding of Surrey schools and gang wars on the city's streets.
"But there was nothing," he said. "We were shocked, since most of the people in the audience were South Asians."
News of Sandhu's defection from the Watts camp moved quickly along the Liberal grapevine, and Sandhu said he has been approached by several other campaigns with offers to back a different candidate. He's made no decision yet.
Watts, meanwhile, denied any problems in her campaign, insisting there is no schism with a South Asian community in Surrey that backed her in the past for mayor.
"Our campaign team and supporters are represented by people from many ages and ethnicities, including South Asians," she said.
In a statement, the Watts campaign said "several South Asian people have key roles" in the campaign, including former Liberal cabinet minister Gulzar Cheema.
"Dianne Watts probably has the most diverse team working for her of any of the leadership candidates," a campaign official said, although the campaign declined to release a full list of names and positions.
The loss of Sandhu is damaging, especially if he takes his influence to a rival campaign.
But Watts still clearly has star power that's appealing to party members, something she can still capitalize on in a wide-open Liberal leadership race that will only heat up from here.
