Inside the B.C. election: How the Conservatives won, why the NDP failed

Seven weeks ago, when he was still B.C.’s premier, David Eby held a campaign-style rally in Victoria’s Inner Harbour, billed as an event to stand up against U.S. tariffs, featuring patriotic rap music and references to poutine.

After a performance by OGR-Scintilla, a comedian dubbed the “Greatest Rapper in Canada,” Eby enthusiastically addressed the crowd wearing a red-and-black-checked “Salmo dinner jacket,” a gift from his Kootenay Central MLA. He promised to protect B.C. from the “unhinged” American president, with an enormous Canadian flag and the legislature behind him.

The Sept. 8 event led to speculation that the NDP was gearing up for a snap election less than two years after B.C.’s last trip to the polls.

About a week later, a source said, NDP MLAs pushed back against what they felt was a bad call to charge into a campaign. Surrey MLAs were especially concerned, according to the source.

Former NDP MLA Garry Begg, who lost his re-election bid in Surrey-Guildford, said caucus confidentiality prohibits him from disclosing any details about that meeting. But, in general, he said some people were concerned about facing an election “too soon” given the uncertainty of an electoral win.

“It was thought that you should wait, that it was intemperate to move forward,” Begg said.

Rick Glumac, who lost his NDP seat in Port Moody-Burquitlam, also declined to discuss the meeting but added: “I don’t personally believe that it’s a good idea to have a snap election. Period. I think if you’re trying to take political advantage, I think people see that and react to that in a negative way.”

The decision to call the snap election that ended the nine-year reign of the B.C. NDP came down to just Eby and two of his closest advisers: his new chief of staff, Andrew Mercier, and recently hired campaign manager Cheryl Oates, Postmedia News has learned.

The trio’s gamble backfired spectacularly, allowing a fractured Conservative party with an interim leader to form the province’s largest majority government in 25 years.

Postmedia spoke with more than a dozen candidates and political watchers to tell the inside story of this election: Conservative strategists say they knew they had won by mid-October, while multiple NDP members feared they were going to lose on Day 1 of the campaign.

Days after NDP MLAs were privately pushing back against Eby’s plan to go to the polls, many politicians were in Vancouver for the Union of B.C. Municipalities Conference. Rumours of a snap election were so persistent that the UBCM passed a resolution asking the province to wait until after the municipal election campaign was over.

Nonetheless, it’s believed that by Friday, Sept. 18, Eby had “the wheels in motion” to call the election, said Geoff Meggs, former chief of staff to the late NDP Premier John Horgan. That same day Eby delivered a UBCM speech, laden with electioneering promises.

At this point, Kerry-Lynne Findlay was the B.C. Conservatives’ controversial leader, who presented little opposition because her party was imploding. After four months with Findlay at the helm, much of the party and caucus staff had been fired, the party’s executive director and president had both quit and 13 MLAs had left or been kicked out over concerns about her leadership.