For now, I will only be posting this message I received after I was called by a political operative, asked to put in for a membership and was told no one was blocking me from within the BC Conservatives:
Hi Dean,
Your membership was revoked by the Party’s board of directors in 2010. That membership ban is still in place so we cannot accept your recent membership application
Best regards,
Dan Denis
BC Conservative Party
Membership Director
April 13, 2012 at 1:03 PM
Need some back-story here – why was your membership revoked in 2010?
April 13, 2012 at 1:10 PM
Short story was that there was an internal fight over talking to Liberal MLA Blair Lekstrom. Some were (without authorization) trying to get him to move into BC Cons and I objected. Lost the battle when they held a secret vote to remove me. Lots of the same people from then are still on the board now.
April 13, 2012 at 7:05 PM
This is very disappointing since we so badly need an alternative to the two left-wing parties in BC. It does not appear to be a party of grown-ups going by your example.
April 13, 2012 at 7:16 PM
Pettiness is not an attractive trait and shows badly on these ‘leaders’. What’s needed is people with good attitudes who want get the real work done.
April 13, 2012 at 1:51 PM
Great, just what we need another party full of whiny “do it my way or it’s the highway” clowns. If these guys can’t live with alternative ideas how do they expect to grow? Dislike of the liberal party will only carry them so far. They need to accept people not automatons towing the party line word for word. Just my opinion.
April 13, 2012 at 2:15 PM
I couldn’t agree more. It will never be a small group of like-minded people who will form government and past grudges and personal hatred need to be put aside.
April 13, 2012 at 9:44 PM
That’s why when Randy White and John Cummins came charging into the BC Conseratives they didn’t build bridges they burned them.
April 13, 2012 at 10:15 PM
When I was there, Randy White was doing a lot of things that he had no authority to do.
April 13, 2012 at 2:10 PM
I don’t care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.
Groucho Marx
April 13, 2012 at 2:11 PM
If they don’t want you, that’s their loss as far as I’m concerned. (just sayin)
April 13, 2012 at 2:19 PM
Yes thank you but the thing is that it’s bigger than just my personal feelings. We need a real alternative here in BC and this attitude from the BC Conservatives that they don’t need any help will only aide the Liberals and NDP.
April 13, 2012 at 3:49 PM
Conservatives seem to have a penchant for being their own worst enemies!
April 13, 2012 at 4:20 PM
Egos and fiefdom protecting by gate-keepers is a bad combination
April 13, 2012 at 2:36 PM
Dean just how much influence does the social conservative wing have on the overall Party,especially the Leader,Cummins?
I live in a very conservative area of the Province and the Provincial Conservatives are invisible. I even know a couple of Party members,but haven’t heard a word about a potential candidate.
I have to ask, are they waiting for the last minute to field candidates,and if so , why?
I hate having to consider voting for an unknown,I think a lot of voters feel the same way.
April 13, 2012 at 4:16 PM
The social conservative wing is by far the largest make-up including Cummins himself who defined himself as one on a Global TV interview (see here).
The BC Conservatives are completely invisible here where I live as well. I have absolutely no idea what they are doing as to candidates. It defies logic to wait so long and I chalk it up to a very poor organization just as it was when I was there screaming for people to get off their butts a couple years ago. Same people same results…
April 13, 2012 at 3:11 PM
I’d have to agree with you Dean as on the face of it this appears as petty politics.
Just as when candidates ‘volley’ one another in a leadership race, it would be a poor and incompetent winning contestant who out of spite attempted to banish from the ranks, contestants who may have opposed his/her point of view during the race…Or apply that at any level as to the workings of a political party.
Presently membership should be a quest so as to get all onboard as is feasibly possible in order to defeat a very incompetent & corrupt ruling gov’t.
Short of some catastrophic past history of a membership applicant then there should be no contest.
From where I sit with viewing your day to day contributions as to the political scene, I would have to say that a forthright explanation by the BC Conservative Party is rightfully due. In short I can’t see you not being an asset.
As an aside, there are a few on the executive that don’t impress me, but then again as has previously been mentioned, strength in a party comes from thoughtful diversity.
April 13, 2012 at 4:19 PM
There is no other logical reason for what they have done than personal animosity which certainly doesn’t help when we are trying to replace the Liberals
April 13, 2012 at 7:08 PM
I only wish we had a party like the Alberta Wildrose Party with a leader equal to Danielle Smith.
April 13, 2012 at 7:13 PM
Can you imagine if we had her?
April 13, 2012 at 9:45 PM
Having lived through the Peter Pollen, Graham Lea era of BC Conservative politics; the Blair Lekstrom affair seemed like a little piece of History Repeating itself. Short cuts have a bad habit of biting you in the ass in the long run.
As to whether the party is right to vet potential members, (potentially very visible members), I can only point to the part David Orchard played in the destruction of the Progressive Conservative Party. How would the world be different if his membership had been rejected?
Now I have never met you, and on the advice of my grandfather I never support/vote for anyone I haven’t had a coffee with. I look forward to remedying that someday soon.
But just to give everyone the other side of the coin; I attended the kick off meeting for the Conservative Candidate in Penticton at the start of the last provincial election. We have all been to this kind of meeting, local dignitary gives a welcome speech, introduces the Candidate. Candidate has a few encouraging words and introduces the guest speaker, in this case the Party Leader. Afterwards everyone mingles with a cup of coffee or a glass of wine.
As a result of that meeting, and the talks I had with the people supporting Mr. Delaney, I left and never came back. We are known by the company we keep.
Now on the off chance somebody down at BC Conservative Party headquarters monitors your Blog, (which if I were them….) I would like to have coffee with whoever is organizing election readiness in the Penticton Riding. oscar@seiter.ca
April 13, 2012 at 10:23 PM
Let me know if you hear from anybody…
April 14, 2012 at 7:21 AM
Your story reminds me of one I heard from a woman in the Eastern U.S. She was fed up with Obama and wanted to help effect some change. So she went down to her nearest Republican Party office. They refused to accept her help and it became clear to her very quickly that the GOP was a privileged little club. They didn’t want any new blood or new ideas.
Did she give up? Nope, she became an instrumental early leader of one of the Tea Party groups.
April 14, 2012 at 7:37 AM
Thank you for that excellent point.
There are three options when this type of gate-keeping happens:
1) the person ‘gives up’ and lashes out at those involved
2) the person moves to another political party or gets involved in the creation of a new one
3) the person works to find a new leader that is open, welcoming, a bridge-builder and who would never allow these gate-keepers to operate in this fashion
April 14, 2012 at 12:30 PM
You might want to think of option 2. The Freedom Party didn’t gain a single seat in Ontario this past election but it has started the seed of something that we’ll be in dire need of once McGuilty runs the province further into the ground; something of which BC, I believe, will follow suit with the furtherance of left of center governments.
April 20, 2012 at 12:18 PM
[...] Membership Director (see here) [...]
April 13, 2012 at 6:14 PM
I know little of the back-story, except what I could Google. From what I have seen/read of you, however, it appears the BC Conservatives are making a huge mistake. And I don’t think it is reflective of the Party as a whole, but rather a small group with a personal grudge.
April 13, 2012 at 6:23 PM
Yes, I don’t believe for a second that the party membership backs this type of vindictiveness by those blocking me and if they knew what was going on, would be very upset with this wasted of hate-energy when we should be campaigning and building.