The BC NDP has had some interesting internal developments in the past couple of days, so I thought I'd lump it all together into one central article. Here goes.
NDP memberships
As reported by Vaughn Palmer at his Vancouver Sun blog:
By the numbers here's how it looks.
The party started out with about 14,500 members at the time James bowed out in the face of a caucus revolt in early December.
The brief but nevertheless effective membership drive -- including both new members and renewals (thanks to David Schreck for pointing this out) -- added about 13,500 members to the ranks by the Jan. 17 cut off.
Just over 7,000 are estimated to come from the South Asian community.
And about 4,000 of those came from a half-dozen ridings, five in Surrey (Green Timbers, Newton, Panorama, Fleetwood, and Whalley) plus immediately adjacent Delta North.
Several other ridings accounted for a significant surge (more than 150 new members) from the South Asian community -- Abbotsford West, Vancouver-Fraserview, Vancouver-Langara, Boundary-Similkameen, Abbotsford South, Port Coquitlam, and Surrey-Tynehead.
As for the 6,500 classified as "other," the biggest single jump was the addition of almost 800 members in Port Coquitlam.
By no coincidence, that riding is home base to leadership candidate Mike Farnworth.
He goes on to note that this growth in support in Surrey could mean good things for Adrian Dix:
But Dix is thought to be the major beneficiary of those new members in Surrey.
In particular, he has the support Surrey MLAs Sue Hammel, Harry Bains and Bruce Ralston, whose ridings (Green Timbers, Newton, and Whalley, respectively) delivered more than 2,000 memberships from the South Asian community.
Farnworth has the support of Surrey MLA Jagrup Brar and Horgan has the support of Fraser-Nicola MLA Harry Lali, both of whom accounted for a significant sign-up in the South Asian community.
Based on one campaign's survey of the voting support for the three main candidates, Dix would appear to be in first place.
Sean Holman at Public Eye Online, meanwhile, gives a breakdown of the numbers - and notes that these new memberships in Surrey could be good news for John Horgan: "That means leadership candidate John Horgan - who represents the riding of Juan de Fuca and is best known on the Island - might have more support than initially anticipated."
Perhaps these new membership numbers will mean nothing to the eventual outcome of the NDP leadership race. But since this race doesn't seem to be about policy, and the leadership candidates themselves seem to be presenting a fairly unified front - no sniping amongst friends, here - it might well come down to a numbers game through sheer dumb luck. That seems about as good a harbinger of the outcome as any so far.
Praise for Dana Larsen
Marijuana activist and NDP leadership candidate Dana Larsen garnished some praise from BC NDP icon Corky Evans the other day in the wake of an all-candidates debate in Nelson. Sean Holman at Public Eye Online notes:
"Dana has never suffered under the oppression of a Message Box, so he probably doesn't know that it is exceedingly rare to hear a politician say, just straight up, who is stealing from who and why," Mr. Evans stated.
"When he explained to people that the Liberals are not stupid and the outcomes of their actions are not mistakes but the intended result of policies meant to degrade the role of the Province, he received the largest (I didn't have a meter, but I think I am right) applause of the night."
Indeed, Corky Evans doesn't seem to be the only one who was impressed by Dana Larsen in Nelson, as Greg Nesteroff reports for the Nelson Star:
Colleen Jones of Trail said watching the debate actually made it harder to decide who to support.
“Before coming in here, I thought I had my choice made,” she said. “I really like Adrian Dix. But Dana Larsen, for someone coming up the middle, was a shock. I wasn’t expecting him to be so well-versed and articulate. I thought he did a really good job.”
Good for you, Dana.
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