Christy Clark accused of fraudulent tactics in Liberal leadership battle tricks

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Christy Clark accused of fraudulent tactics in Liberal leadership battle



From Whiskergate to Copygate — it’s another day, another allegation of dirty tricks and fraudulent membership sign-ups against front-running Liberal leadership candidate Christy Clark.

This time, the accusations are flying fast and furious from the campaign of leadership rival Kevin

Falcon, who alleged Monday that Clark used hundreds — “maybe thousands” — of photocopied Liberal membership forms to sign up supporters and swamp the competition.

“In our view, this is much worse than a cat being signed up to support Christy Clark,” said Norman Stowe, a spokesman for the Falcon campaign. “They claimed the cat thing was a practical joke. Well, this is no joke. This appears to be widespread, orchestrated rule-breaking.”

Stowe said the Falcon campaign uncovered evidence that Clark supporters circulated photocopies of official Liberal membership forms at rallies and meetings. But photocopied forms are not admissible under the leadership contest’s strict sign-up rules.

Liberal MLA Dave Hayer said a Clark supporter gave him one of the photocopied forms by mistake at last week’s all-candidates debate in Kamloops.

“I guess he thought I was with the Christy Clark campaign, but I actually support Kevin Falcon,” Hayer said.

“So I just put the forms in my pocket. They look real, because they are high-quality colour copies, but I knew right away they were forgeries because they didn’t show the required serial number.”

One of the forms contained the personal information of Kamloops commercial painter Dean Podlubny, who said Monday he wanted to join the party to vote for Clark as leader.

“I just filled out the form and paid $10 cash for a membership,” Pod-lubny said.

But if Podlubny’s photocopied membership form was rejected by the party, there were only two ways he could have received a Liberal membership card, according to Stowe.

“Someone would have had to forge his signature on a genuine membership application,” Stowe said. “Or someone could have gone online, keyed in his personal information and paid the fee with a credit card. Either way is against the rules — and we want answers.”

But the Clark camp denied any wrongdoing, and said no one has been signed up to support Clark against their wishes or had their memberships paid inappropriately.

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“This stuff just doesn’t stop,” a Clark campaign insider moaned. “We’re winning, they know it, and now they’re throwing mud. It’s pathetic.”

Chad Pederson, executive director of the B.C. Liberal Party, acknowledged he received an official complaint from the Falcon camp about the photocopied membership forms, but downplayed any problems.

“Photocopies are not allowed, but we haven’t received any photocopied membership applications,” he said, adding it is OK to apply for a membership online on someone else’s behalf, as long as the applicant pays with their own credit card.

(The only exception is a family membership, where one person can pay for four memberships if all the applicants live at the same address.)

Pederson said it would be difficult for the party to trace examples of people who filled out a photocopied form, paid cash, then had someone else pay the fee online with a credit card.

“We don’t keep records of credit-card numbers for personal privacy reasons,” Pederson said.

Not good enough for Team Falcon.

“I had a guy come into my office who owns a photocopy business, and he said someone came in and made 900 colour copies of Liberal membership forms,” said Hayer. “This is manipulation of the system.”

Stowe said the Falcon camp is furious about the photocopy tactics because the party placed strict limits on how many official membership forms each campaign was allowed to have. Campaigns were required to bring back completed booklets of membership forms before new ones were issued.

He said Falcon is also concerned Clark could have used Visa gift cards — without personal identification on them — to pay for online memberships from people who signed the photocopied forms.

Clark declined to comment on all this Monday.

“If we keep responding to every conspiracy theory, it will just get worse,” a senior official from the Clark camp said. “They’ve been watching too many reruns of The X Files.”

Falcon’s accusations follow last week’s uproar over a cat belonging to a Clark volunteer that was signed up for a Liberal membership, an episode quickly dubbed Whiskergate in the blogosphere.

“Christy is concentrating on her campaign and talking to the people,” the official said. “The rest is just a lot of whining.”

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BC Liberal party hopefulls Christy Clark(L), Mike de jong(2L), Kevin Falcon(2R) and Moira Stilwell(R) wait thier turn to address the Build 2030 event Wednesday, January 11, 2011 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Vancouver.