Clark's resignation today certainly surprised everyone including her BC Lib caucus. Based upon a telephone interview tonight with Global BC's Keith Baldrey, Clark confided that if the GreeNDP gov't indeed lasted a couple of years that the proverbial knives would likely begin to come out from caucus. Ergo, Clark wanted to leave on her own terms after reflection. Certainly Clark, had she won the 2017 election, would have resigned and left office before the 2021 election. In reality, preems have a shelf life of 10 years at the max.
Suspect that numerous candidates will emerge, down the road, for Clark's replacement. Clark's resignation will undoubtedly change BC's political dynamic.
But, should she decide to take the jump, former Surrey mayor and current fed Con MP Dianne Watts would likely be considered the front-runner and further change BC's political dynamic.
So who is Dianne Watts and what is her electoral time-line to date?
Watts was first elected to Surrey council back in 1996. Watts later had a falling out with right-wing mayor Doug McCallum and ran as an independent mayoral candidate in the 2005 muni election. One must remember that both Watts and Doug McCallum were part of the Surrey municipal party SME at the time, before she broke ranks. Surprisingly Watts won in 2005 but faced animosity from the SME party dominated Surrey municipal council shortly thereafter. Nevertheless, Watts, also surprisingly, rekindled relationships and later brought SME Surrey councillors aboard forming a new Surrey muni party called Surrey First - which dominates Surrey municipal politics to this day.
Moreover, Watts also brought long-time centre-left councillor Judy Villeneuve (former NDP candidate) as well centre-left councillor Barinder Rasode into the Surrey First fold as well. Both had previously been associated with the Surrey NDP farm team SCE, which is now basically dead.
Watts transformed Surrey from the perception a red-neck suburban municipality into its own. Watts' legacy includes turning old north Surrey into a future vibrant downtown core - condominium and office skyscrapers are beginning to dominate the skyline.
Watts ran as mayor in 2005, 2008, and 2011 and in the latter 2 elections received 80% and 86% popular vote shares respectively. Moreover, Watts was among the finalists for the 2010 World Mayor prize and Watts was ultimately selected as "the fourth-best mayor in the world".
After the May, 2009 BC election, the BC Libs faced a debacle with the HST affair. Interestingly enough, an Angus Reid Strategies opinion poll, several months later on September 5, 2009, had this result for following question with net score results:
[link now broken]
When BC Lib preem Gordon Campbell resigned later in late 2010. Watts' name was again highly touted and bandied about in the media as a potential contender for replacement. However, many pundits suggested that Watts was not interested at the time (including myself) considering that the BC Libs were suffering internal turmoil with the HST fiasco and Watts prized her mayoral position and wanted to complete her ambitions in Surrey with another 3-year term.
On November 5, 2010, Ipsos Reid released the poll results of "potential" BC Lib contenders with public net positive/net negative scores:
1. Dianne Watts +30
2. Carole Taylor +21
...
5. Christy Clark -14
On or about December 10, 2010, Watts confirmed, in an exclusive interview, that she had no interest in the leadership of the BC Libs at the time. 3 interesting matters stand out from that interview though:
1. The Global BC TV journalist interviewing was Jas Johal, who was elected in the 2017 election in Richmond-Queensborough;
2. Reference therein to a then Ipsos poll that 65% of BCers wanted Watts to run for the BC Lib leadership;
3. Watts stating that she would have endorsed former BC Liberal finance minister Carole Taylor in the BC Lib leadership race. That's key because Carole Taylor was a long-time federal Liberal and her now deceased spouse was Art Phillips, former Vancouver Centre Liberal MP. Ergo, Watts has always been considered a red tory/blue liberal on the political spectrum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_jFML49WLMWatts has always been very popular, non-devisive, intelligent and well-respected. Certainly Carole Taylor could also be categorized in that same mold. To boot, both could be considered as "Tier 1" type candidates and aside from those two, cannot see any other similar Tier 1 leadership candidates, of any political stripe, going back ~60 years.
Watts later won mayoral re-election in November, 2011 and finished her Surrey mayoral term in November, 2014. At the outset, Watts stated that she would only run 3 terms for mayor and she thus completed same.
In 2015, both the federal Liberals and federal Cons courted Watts to run under their banner for the October, 2015 election in the new riding of South Surrey-White Rock after federal redistribution. That area has always had centre-right demographics and elected PCs, Reform, Canadian Alliance, and Con MPs. Without checking, I suspect that the last time that this area was majority fed Lib territory was back in 1968 during original Trudeau-mania.
Harper came out to BC numerous times to court Watts and finally succeeded in bagging her as a candidate in SS-WR with Watts also likely expecting to be a fed Con cabinet minister in a re-elected Con gov't. However, on e-day October, 2015, the anti-Harper Con tide, pro-JT Liberal tide was so strong, Watts almost lost - she won by a 2.5% margin over her fed Liberal rival Judy Higginbothan, who was also a former Surrey councillor between 1983 and 2008 - also a centre-right "blue" Liberal. Had Watts not been the Con candidate here in 2015, undoubtedly the fed Liberals would have bagged another seat.
Since then, Watts has been a Con opposition MP, with a critic role, but essentially has a low profile with almost zero media exposure in BC. Watts will likely continue in that same role after the 2019 fed election. 5 - 6 hour flights between the west coast and Ottawa are also apparently taking a toll on Watts.
Back in April, 2017 of this year, Watts had an interview with an obscure media outlet known as "Surrey604" and some of her statements re:Ottawa stood out thereto:
http://surrey604.com/2017/04/23/dianne-watts-on-the-national-stage/On her social media Twitter feed (whomever is actually paying attention to same these days) Watts has always been fed politics. But when the GreeNDP accord was finalized on May 30, 2017 Watts, out of the norm, tweeted as follows:
Thereafter, a weekly BC political broadcast by Shaw-TV, hosted by Vancouver Sun political columnist Vaughn Palmer had Province political columnist Mike Smyth on as a guest. The question of Clark's leadership came up and Mike Smyth stated that he had spoken with many in the BC Liberal Party and "the name Dianne Watts keeps coming up and I hear that she may be interested this time."
Moreover, Smyth stated - para-phrasing that "Watts is one candidate that the BC NDP fears". Was surprised at his statements at the time. I actually expected Clark to be around for at least another year.
And then today's announcement. Have now also seen, on social media, Dianne Watts name bandied about by both fed Liberal voters and fed Con voters.
And heard Province political columnist Mike Smyth on CKNW today again mentioning Dianne Watts name exclusively, which Global BC news is also carrying:
http://globalnews.ca/news/3633706/who-will-be-the-next-leader-of-the-bc-liberals/Still very early days. But if Watts actually decides to enter the race... I would make Watts the odds-on-favourite on winning same.
