BC Liberal leadership vote heads to fifth ballot

UPDATE: Kevin Falcon has been chosen at the BC Liberals’ new leader

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Earlier:

The BC Liberals are heading into a fifth round of ballots in the party’s leadership race. Members are picking a replacement for Andrew Wilkinson from a list of seven candidates.

Frontrunner Kevin Falcon garnered 49.63 per cent of votes in the fourth round.

Cielo Properties president Stan Sipos, Kelowna-Mission MLA Renee Merrifield, political strategist Gavin Dew, and former BC CHamber of Commerce boss Val Litwin have been progressively dropped from the ballot.

The other candidates are Vancouver-Langara MLA Michael Lee and Skeena MLA Ellis Ross.

Voting in #bclib22 is now open! Visit https://t.co/mC9PjnIPjp or phone 1-888-492-4763 to cast your ballot today! #bcpoli pic.twitter.com/pHFvFsMFXG

— BC Liberals (@bcliberals) February 3, 2022

Falcon, who many pundits have named as the frontrunner, served as Finance Minister and Deputy Premier in previous BC Liberal governments.

Hamish Telford, an associate professor of political science at the University of the Fraser Valley says the winner will have their work cut out for them.

“The job as the new leader is to rebuild that coalition. It’s going to be a huge challenge. The NDP seems to have really created a lock on progressive urban voters. It’s going to be very difficult for the new Liberal leader, whoever it might be to win those voters back.”

The party gained more than 20,000 members during the leadership process for a total of about 43,000, who may vote online or by phone for a new leader to replace Andrew Wilkinson after his resignation following the party’s second place showing in the 2020 election.

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Telford says with so many candidates at play, it would be challenging to surpass the frontrunner, Falcon.

“The difficulty in an anybody but the leader movement, in this case Kevin Falcon, is it’s difficult to coordinate, especially when you’ve got so many candidates at play, and it’s not going to play out at a convention center. The members have been sent their ballots and they’re going to be filling them out with their preferences. So you really have to be communicating with your identified supporters about the order in which you want them to choose.”

Meanwhile, a judge is set to deliver her decision on a petition that asks the British Columbia Supreme Court to delay the release of results from the BC Liberal party’s leadership vote.

Justice Heather MacNaughton heard arguments Friday from lawyers for the Liberals and longtime party member Vikram Bajwa, who asked the court for an order delaying the release of results by 15 days over concerns about the party’s recent audit of new members it signed up during the leadership contest.

Voting for the leadership closes at 5:00 p.m. Saturday.