B.C. Liberal membership expected to double

The race to replace Premier Gordon Campbell has generated so much interest that membership in the B.C. Liberal Party is expected to double.

The level of renewed interest in the B.C. Liberals is expected to be revealed Friday as the six leadership candidates vying to replace Campbell on Feb. 26 meet the deadline to sign up new party members.

Though no onefrom the leadership camps or the B.C. Liberal Party will provide their own sign-up numbers, the general agreement is that party membership is expected to at least double on Friday to 70,000 members.

"They're strong," is the official Liberal Party comment on the membership sign-ups, said party spokesperson Lilian Kim.

She said the party plans to provide a more detailed update after the deadline.

Party insiders say 20,000 new memberships have already been received, 18,000 of which are for new members and 2,000 are membership renewals.

New ballot system

Former B.C. attorney general Geoff Plant, who is not officially affiliated with any of the six leadership candidates, said the membership drive offers British Columbians a unique opportunity, one that likely only happens once in a generation.

The $10, four-year membership gives Liberals the chance to elect a new party leader and premier with the same vote, he said.

"It's a mistake for people who are interested in how we're governed to kind of hang back and be wallflowers right now when they've got a real opportunity to be a participant and to help choose the next premier," Plant said.

The likelihood that Liberal party members from every corner of the province will hold equal voting power at the convention is equally inviting, he said.

The party will vote on Feb. 12 to approve a weighted ballot system to elect the new leader, as opposed to the current one-member, one-vote system.

Party members will rank their candidates in order of preference and the weighted ballot gives members from each of the province's 85 ridings equal voting power.

Plant said some ridings will have thousands of Liberal members, while in ridings where the Liberals may not hold the seat and party members are fewer, their voting power increases because they are representing possibly hundreds of members as opposed to thousands in stronger Liberal ridings.

"Their votes are going to count as much or more than the votes in constituencies that may have a couple thousand members," he said.

Liberals and NDP selecting new leaders

Gavin Dew, a former Campbell campaign worker who now represents Vancouver-based Build 2030, a not-for-profit groupthat caters to what it calls the next generation of British Columbia's movers and shakers, said Campbell's resignation appears to have ignited political interest among many young people.

"It's really incredible to look at where things were a couple of months ago," he said.

"Basically it was if they didn't screw it up, the NDP were government. Now it looks like they've managed to shoot themselves in the foot."

When Campbell announced on Nov. 3 he was stepping down, his personal approval rating was in the single digits. But then some members of the NDP caucus started to openly question Carole James's leadership, prompting her resignation last month.

Now both parties are in leadership races, with the Liberals electing a new leader in less than a month and the NDP leadership vote set for April 17.

The six Liberal leadership candidates are former cabinet ministers George Abbott, Kevin Falcon, Moira Stilwell and Mike de Jong, and former cabinet minister turned radio host Christy Clark and former Parksville mayor Ed Mayne.

The six NDP leadership candidates are James supporters Adrian Dix, Mike Farnworth and John Horgan and James dissidents Harry Lali and Nicholas Simons and pot activist Dana Larsen.