Image credit: Mel Rothenburger

By Mel Rothenburger

Armchair Mayor

ROTHENBURGER: Battle for new Kamloops Centre riding bound to be contentious

Mar 9, 2024 | 7:45 AM

THE MAN WHO THINKS non-profit agencies that criticize City council should be barred from receiving grant funding wants to be the next MLA for Kamloops Centre.

Bill Sarai announced his intention this week to seek the NDP nomination for the Oct. 19 provincial election in the newly configured urban riding. With his name recognition as a City councillor, he could put up a good challenge to incumbent BC United MLA Peter Milobar.

That is, assuming Sarai is successful in getting the nomination, which I would bet on. This could make for an entertaining battle. It’s not unusual to see steam rising from Sarai’s head during council debates, figuratively at least. The man can’t stop himself, especially when it comes to disagreements with Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson.

As for Milobar, now a battle-hardened veteran of the Legislature, well, he can more than hold his own in the thrust and parry of politics — I nicknamed him Mayor Crankypants when he was in City Hall.

Who will Sarai’s competition be for the NDP’s nomination? I doubt he’d be running if he didn’t already have substantial support from within the party, so an acclamation is in the cards. It’s much more likely there will be a race for the nomination in Kamloops-North Thompson. More on that in a minute.

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The new riding of Kamloops Centre takes in the major part of the urban population served by the expiring Kamloops-South Thompson riding, which has long been safe ground for the BC Liberals, now BC United. It includes North and South Kamloops, Brocklehurst, Aberdeen and Sahali.

Todd Stone took Kamloops-South Thompson by 20 points over the NDP candidate in 2020, and by a similar margin in 2013. In 2017, he gave Nancy Bepple of the NDP an even worse drubbing, gathering almost 56 per cent of the vote compared to her 22 per cent.

The Kamloops-North Thompson, on the other hand, has been kinder to the New Democrats. Though they haven’t held it since the mid-1990s when Fred Jackson was MLA, they have a large core vote there. They came within a couple of hundred votes in 2020 with Sadie Hunter carrying the banner even though she had a modest campaign budget.

The boundaries of the riding are somewhat similar to what they were in the past but now take in more of the rural area south and east of the city that used to be in Kamloops-South Thompson.

Stone and Milobar have decided to swap ridings for this year’s contest. Will it make a difference? Sarai, or any NDP candidate for that matter, couldn’t compete in Kamloops Centre under normal circumstances but these aren’t normal circumstances.

BC United is currently in dire straits, though it’s launched a fairly concerted advertising campaign in the runup. Stone’s massive numbers in what is now Kamloops Centre present a big challenge for opponents if that level of support holds up for Milobar, but the fact is that parties are a big if not bigger factor than the candidate in the outcome of elections, and the BC United brand is currently in the tank.

Whether or not the big numbers enjoyed by the Conservative party in opinion polls are real, a credible Conservative candidate is bound to take votes from BC United, which means the NDP could come up the middle. It’s even within the realm of possibility that a Conservative could win the riding.

And given some of the Conservative Party of B.C.’s policies, the campaign trail could be unusually tetchy.

With housing, drug addictions and crime continuing to be top of mind, there will be no shortage of issues for the candidates to square off over. The failure of both City council and the Eby government to make much headway on them is bound to be a factor.

As for Sarai, should he be the candidate, his major gaffe over insisting that non-profits that criticize council should be disqualified from receiving grant money is just the sort of thing that could dog him in a provincial campaign.

That sensitivity to criticism, and his sometimes combative demeaner around the council table, raise the question of how he would adapt to the rough and tumble of provincial politics where he’d be facing brickbats from all directions.

Passion is a pre-requisite in the bigger arena of provincial politics but so is keeping cool under fire. This is shaping up to be one of the more exciting — and probably contentious —provincial elections.

Mel Rothenburger is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or Pattison Media.