Vaughn Palmer: Furstenau the ‘lastenau,’ but new Green leader relishes election challenge
Furstenau #Furstenau
VICTORIA — John Horgan had three years of ups and downs as NDP leader before facing an election.
For Andrew Wilkinson, there were 2½ bumpy years between winning the B.C. Liberal leadership and this fall’s reckoning with the electorate.
After winning the Green party leadership, Sonia Furstenau had all of a week before plunging straight into an election campaign.
The Greens announced Sept. 14 that Furstenau was elected leader over Vancouver lawyer Cam Brewer with 53 per cent of some 4,555 ballots.
Later that day former leader Andrew Weaver posted a perfunctory “congratulations” to Furstenau.
Earlier, he’d made no secret of his disdain for her, denouncing one plank in her leadership platform as “absolutely kooky” and serving as an adviser to Brewer.
Weaver had also endorsed John Horgan for re-election. “I hope he is premier again,” he told podcaster Mo Amir. “There’s no fake John Horgan. There’s the real John Horgan and that is the only John Horgan.”
A day after Furstenau assumed the leadership, Weaver provided cover for the “real” John Horgan to repudiate his own signature on the confidence and supply agreement (CASA) with the Greens.
“Were Premier Horgan to call an election I would unequivocally say his reasons to do so would not be a violation of CASA,” the former Green leader told CTV.
The agreement explicitly precluded Horgan from calling an early election. But Weaver blamed Green MLAs Furstenau and Adam Olsen for working to “hamper and hijack” the NDP’s ability to manage the COVID-19 crisis, though neither of them voted against any measures to manage the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Nevertheless Furstenau took a stab at persuading Horgan there was no need for an election to stabilize the NDP’s hold on power.
She met with him in the premier’s office on Friday the 18th, invoking the CASA commitment to mutual consultations for what would prove to be the last time.
“I assured the premier that he had a stable government and outlined concrete areas of co-operation for us to work on,” she would say later.
She also reminded the premier that CASA was a signed agreement among all NDP and Green MLAs, not just himself and Weaver.
Horgan heard her out, not letting on that he was on the verge of calling an election. On the Monday, after meeting the lieutenant-governor, he made it official.
Furstenau got the news at the same time as everyone else in the province. Despite the “no surprises” clause in CASA, “Furstenau was the lastenau,” as one wag put it. In light of the new leader’s rough treatment by Weaver and Horgan, the Greens might have considered the 1970s pop hit Backstabbers as their campaign song.
Instead, Furstenau had some good comebacks ready.
“Tearing up a signed contract with your partners, ignoring the law that establishes fixed election dates and plunging this province into an unnecessary election risks undoing so much of the progress we have seen,” she declared, addressing Horgan directly.
“The more you let partisanship pollute public discourse the less trust people will have in their leaders. And trust in our leaders will be essential for the difficult road ahead.”
Her response to the premier’s decision to repudiate CASA: “What the agreement didn’t stipulate was absolute total obedience to the NDP.”
When Horgan went on to accuse the Greens of sabotaging the NDP’s $10-a-day child care plan, Furstenau produced evidence she had worked with the government for three years on comprehensive child care.
She and Horgan had “both studied history” in university, said Furstenau. But only he was bent on rewriting it.
Still, the Greens had a mountain to climb in terms of election readiness. Horgan was counting on it.
“We are going to show them we are not in a weakened state,” she vowed in that first week. “We are very strong. We are very prepared.”
But when nominations closed Oct. 2, the Greens fell short of a full slate, running candidates in 74 of 87 ridings. Yet it was an impressive showing for a leader who had been on the job for less than three weeks.
While pulling together a platform, Furstenau has been buttonholing the voters to elect another minority government.
“What John Horgan appears to want is absolute power,” she told Les Leyne of the Victoria Times Colonist . “Absolute obedience and no accountability for the decisions he had his government make. That is not the best thing for this province.”
Has she been burned so badly by Horgan that she could never work with him? CKNW broadcaster Simi Sara asked recently. Not necessarily.
“I ran for leader because I think we need a different kind of leadership, a different kind of politics,” Furstenau replied.
“When we get to the other side of the election, one thing that will be guiding any decisions I make is how does it serve the people of B.C.? We’ve got caught up in this idea that parties are like these clubs and they can never talk to each other and never work together. We showed over the last 3½ years that that’s absolutely not true.”
Her next big test is Tuesday, when she faces off against the more experienced Horgan and Wilkinson in the televised debate.
“I seem to be in a relentless underdog story,” Furstenau told Amy Smart of The Canadian Press recently. But that leaves her with nowhere to go but up.
Vpalmer@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/VaughnPalmer
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