It’s completely understandable.
If you’re a first-time candidate invited to an all-candidates meeting sponsored by a very active and vocal advocacy group, you might think twice about going.
And if your party has a position that that advocacy group is strongly opposed to, well, you get the drift.
We hope that was not the reason Steve Darling was apparently double-booked on the evening of April 18 when BROKE hosted its all-candidates meeting (see story on page 9).
But it wouldn’t be the first time a political party decided to play dodgeball with the media and/or the public in an election campaign.
The federal Conservatives were caught red-handed in the last federal election keeping their candidates hidden from the media.
Their strategy was simple: See no candidates, question no candidates, and hope voters believe the ads and vote their prejudices.
It’s a cynical strategy, and it does a great disservice to democracy. And it shows a particular disdain for voters.
There were a couple of other all-candidates meetings in the Lower Mainland last week where the Liberal candidates were no-shows.
We hope this is all a coincidence.
Because if it is some part of a cynical game plan, then that alone should disqualify those candidates from receiving a voter’s support.
A large part of democracy is just showing up.
It takes guts to run for office and it takes guts to stand up for unpopular positions.
And, yes, newbie candidates will be tested with questions they haven’t yet mastered the answers to. That’s to be expected. But voters understand it takes time to learn all the details, and they understand when a candidate is inexperienced.
What is much harder to understand is how a candidate who is playing hide-and-seek with voters and/or the media can promise to stand up for constituents in their riding when they can’t even face the voters in a campaign.
