BC Conservatives fail to win any seats
Posted May 15, 2013 12:50 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
LANGLEY (NEWS1130) – The BC Conservatives may have failed to win a single seat, but they say the party is not dead.
Leader John Cummins lost his own bid in the Langley riding, coming in third behind BC Liberal incumbent Mary Polak and the NDP’s Andrew Mercier. Despite a total loss, Cummins is not stepping aside just yet.
“I’ll continue on as leader of the party,” he says. “We have a leadership convention coming up in the fall and I fully expect there’ll be a leadership review.”
Cummins says come 2017, the party will be better organized and better funded to try again. “I just want to assure you all that we’re here for the long run. This isn’t a one shot affair. BC Conservatives are here to stay.”
Even with some trouble candidates, Cummins doesn’t think he could have done anything differently. He doesn’t think the Liberals won on their record.
“People were saying to us, ‘I like what you stand for, I like your candidate, I’d like to vote for you,’ and I think what happened at the end of the day was a fear of moving forward with an NDP government,” he adds. “I think that’s what you’re seeing here. The fear of another NDP government seems to be the defining factor.”
Polak, meanwhile, says the Liberal party’s comeback and her third-consecutive victory is a reflection of hard work.
“Campaigns matter and polls don’t decide elections, voters do,” she says. “At the end of the day, we had a strong team. In Langley and across the province, we had everyday people join with us.”
Polak was first elected in Langley in 2005.
