Local candidates worried snap provincial election will ‘suck up all the oxygen’ from their campaigns

Municipal election candidates in the Okanagan have been working hard to make their case to voters to elect them and now Premier David Eby has thrown a wrench into the works by calling a simultaneous snap provincial election.

Eby announced today, Sept. 22, that a provincial election will be held on Saturday, Oct. 24, just a week after municipal election day, Oct. 17. It’s a rare thing for local and provincial elections to happen at the same time, and many candidates are frustrated by the problems it will cause.

Penticton city council incumbent candidate Shannon Stewart was at the Union of BC Municipalities conference in Vancouver last week where local leaders passed a resolution asking the provincial government not to call an election.

“There was concern about it detracting from municipal elections,” she told iNFOnews.ca.

Stewart said one of the biggest issues was the muddying the waters as far as how power is distributed between local and provincial government. Municipal candidates, who are responsible for keeping the roads plowed in the winter, might build a platform on a provincial issue like BC Corrections Centres.

“The municipal government’s intention is to keep the business of the city operations moving forward. We’re supposed to keep lights on and toilets flushing and garbage picked up,” she said.

“(The provincial election) will falsely invite municipal candidates to potentially step forward with platforms that they truly don’t have much opportunity to influence.”

Kelowna council candidate Davis Kyle is worried the provincial election is going to drown out the municipal campaigns.

“I think it’s going to suck up a lot of oxygen in the room,” he told iNFOnews.ca.

Kyle is concerned the provincial race could take away not just voters’ attention, but things like donations and volunteers.

“There’s plenty of people in my campaign who might choose to volunteer for a provincial political party of whatever persuasion and I couldn’t blame them for that. There’s so many issues that matter to Kelowna residents that are provincial,” he said.

Premier Eby said in his election announcement that it’s about standing up to Donald Trump and the U.S.

But critics have said the election was called after the BC Conservative Party fell into disarray with a mass exodus of MLAs and the leader Kerry Lynne-Findlay’s resignation over the weekend.

“The particular timing of it feels more about the government’s political fortunes than it does about getting good feedback at this present moment,” Kyle said.

Vernon city council candidate Teresa Durning said the provincial election is going to make things difficult because people won’t have time to research all of the candidates and people get burned out on politics during elections.

“It’s going to be messy,” she told iNFOnews.ca. “They’re going to have two elections piled on them and voter fatigue is a real thing.”

Durning said practical things like advertising are going to be a mess because stacking more and more lawn signs on top of each other are going to make them all less effective.

“We invest thousands of dollars into signage and it’s just going to be absolutely watered down,” she said.

Having both elections at the same time doesn’t really benefit anyone, she said.

“The window between the 17th and the 24th of October is a real tight window, so it’ll just complicate things for both us at the municipal level running for seats as well as the provincial candidates,” Durning said.