Then there were four

Following Harry Lali’s early departure, and realizing that the media has unfortunately written off his campaign, BC NDP leadership candidate Nicholas Simons has backed out and endorsed John Horgan.

Personally, I’m disappointed at this move. I liked Simons’ positions and openness. While I’m not convinced he could have won an election, he seemed to have an honest approach and also endorsed evidenced based policy in some of his materials.

Eyes are now turning to Dana Larsen to see if he’ll stick it out.

And while the race drags on (the 90-day membership limit needs to be changed to something realistic like 5 or 30 days), it’s sometimes still tough to tell the candidates apart. Likely not wanting to repeat the internal struggles of last year, the leaders seem to have nothing to criticize about one another.

It’s almost turning into a question of what shade of orange you want.

Adrian Dix still strikes me as the attack dog who will also whip the party hardest, stifling any dissention. He also has the more progressive policies and likely would do the most to right the wrongs of the Campbell years.

Mike Farnworth, while more moderate, is definitely likable. He’s well spoken and many people from across the political spectrum speak of him as the best premier material.

John Horgan is fighting hard as the underdog of the three. Luckily though, he’s no Ed Stelmach since if the Farnworth and Dix camps split with him as their second choice and he cruises by to win, he still likely has what it takes to be a strong leader.

Reading through the comments in the second Tyee article that I linked to reveals a couple commenters who think too poorly of their peers who could be turned off of Farnworth because he’s gay. It’s a sad bit of homophobia to say, “we shouldn’t run a gay candidate because other people might not like it.” Should we not allow women to run because sexists exist? What about Sikhs and Muslims? How about if homophobic comments come out we call them out on it rather than punish the victim some more.

Other issues that come up are Dix being the only real left-wing candidate, while Horgan is the only one untainted by some scandal in the past.

All that aside, I’ll have another run through the candidates websites closer to the voting period and will post my final decisions then.