[溫哥華本地新聞] Palmer: Martin's defection signals more trouble for B.C. Conservatives star, his, trouble, former, likely

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Palmer: Martin's defection signals more trouble for B.C. Conservatives

John Martin was a star candidate for his former party, but his crossing likely won’t be enough to save sagging Liberals



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VICTORIA — The B.C. Liberals spent the week planning “a little surprise” for the B.C. Conservatives and sprang it mid-day Friday, on the eve of the rival party’s annual general meeting.
“John Martin Resigns from B.C. Conservative Party, Seeks B.C. Liberal Nomination,” said the press release from the governing party’s headquarters, as the Liberals displayed their newest recruit at a press conference in Chilliwack.
Martin, a criminologist and right-of-centre media pundit, had been touted as a star candidate by the Conservatives when they persuaded him to run for them in a byelection in one of the two Chilliwack ridings earlier this year.
He’d given the party one of its best showings in a provincial election in three decades, winning 25 per cent of the vote on a shoestring campaign.
Still, the third-place finish (behind the Liberals and the winning New Democratic Party) wasn’t good enough, Martin conceded Friday.
He’d gone with the Conservatives believing they were on the rise and likely to supplant the Liberals as the party of choice for voters not wanting an NDP government. “I was wrong,” he told reporters, noting the party’s slide in the opinion polls.
On Thursday, for instance, Ipsos Reid reported the Conservatives were at 12 per cent support among decided voters, a loss of about one quarter of the 16 per cent support they’d registered in a similar poll taken in June.
Plus there were the party’s internal troubles, on display in a series of leaked memos and coming to a head at this weekend’s annual general meeting in Langley, amid calls for a full blown review of party leader John Cummins.
“The party has not performed up to expectations,” said a disillusioned Martin, explaining his decision to switch to a party that he’d wanted nothing to do with just a few months ago.
He says he still has significant differences with the Liberals. He doesn’t like the carbon tax and opposes a regional garbage incinerator in Chilliwack. He expects to go on doing so, presuming he is chosen as the party’s candidate in the riding adjacent to the one he contested last spring.
“It’s not that far a leap,” Martin insisted. “I’m a free enterpriser. It’s a big tent.”
But it was a big leap in rhetorical terms, witness the fabulous quotes that were readily available from even the most cursory troll of the media coverage of the byelection campaign.
Among the Martin characterizations of the Liberals that are certain to be recycled by his opponents in the next election: “Theirs is a legacy of deceit, incompetence, and financial mismanagement.”
Then there’s Premier Christy Clark’s klutzy, if true, response when some of the Martin comments were played back to her Friday: “We all say things when we are trying to get elected.”
For his part, the newest member of the party of deceit, incompetence and financial mismanagement — a.k.a. the party that will say anything to get elected — came as well prepared as could be expected for the inevitable media barrage.
Joking with reporters, Martin advised that his private hobby is competitive barbecue and “if anyone can make that crow that I’m eating taste good, I’m probably the guy to do it.”

But in fairness, he is hardly the first B.C. politician to switch parties out of an estimation that it was the best way to get a seat at the cabinet table and/or keep the party on the other side of the political divide at bay.
Examples abound: Liberals Pat McGeer, Allan Williams, Garde Gardom, Jack Davis and Bill Vander Zalm and Conservative Hugh Curtis crossing to Social Credit in the mid-70s. Reformers Richard Neufeld and Jack Weisgerber going to the Liberals in the late 1990s. Ex-Liberal turned Progressive Democratic Alliance leader Gordon Wilson joining the NDP cabinet in 1999.