Losing a well-regarded candidate to another party is irksome, but the B.C. NDP has a more pervasive thing to worry about — the party is losing ground at fundraising as well.
The day after former NDP candidate Matt Toner announced he has joined the B.C. Green Party and will be seeking the nod in the soon-to-be vacant Vancouver-Mount Pleasant riding, Elections B.C. released all the parties’ annual disclosure reports.
B.C. Liberals have always brought in more money than the NDP, but the 2014 totals show the gap is widening. And the B.C. Greens, although still far behind, had their best year ever in 2014.
Liberals raised $10.1 million, compared to the NDP’s $3.1 million, and the Greens’ $298,000.
The year after an election is always an off-year, so the numbers usually drop significantly. Liberals dipped from $14 million in 2013 to $10 million. The NDP dropped from $11 million to $3.1 million.
The Greens actually turned the conventional pattern on its head. Fundraising jumped from $234,000 in the election year to $298,000 in 2014.
Overall, the disclosures show a direct link between political fortunes and fundraising. Money follows winners. The Greens elected an MLA for the first time and the higher profile seems to be generating significantly more donations. Liberals won an election completely unexpectedly and the surprise seems to have generated some sustained enthusiasm that carried forward into the following year.
The NDP had a record fundraising year in 2013, based on the overwhelming impression they were going to win the election. They didn’t, and now it’s costing them.
The drop-off in contributions is also partly blamed on the fact they operated for part of the year without a leader. A party official said fundraising centres on the leader. The leadership was up for grabs an extended period in early 2014 before the race sputtered out and John Horgan was acclaimed in May.
The drop-off is most noticeable in two specific categories — corporate and union donations. The party traditionally never collects much from business, but going into the 2013 election as a frontrunner had a spectacular effect on corporation donations. The NDP collected $2.3 million in corporate money that year, much of it from businesses hedging their usual Liberal bets in anticipation of an NDP win.
The 2014 total from corporations is $133,000, back to about normal.
Unions poured $2.8 million into the NDP cause during the election year, but scaled back to $384,000 last year.
The Liberal breakdown, meanwhile, is $3.9 million from individuals, $5.1 million from corporations and the rest from other sources. The $10-million total take is on a par with previous non-election years.
The NDP is counting on the strength of its base with individuals and the fact that they show up in force on the third and fourth years of the election cycle to carry it through. The party is also making progress on cutting its debt. Its financial statement shows an accumulated deficit of $600,000, down from $1.3 million in 2013.
It’s not a crisis by any stretch, but the widening gap with the Liberals and the fact the Greens had their best year ever in what is usually an off-year are at least mildly worrying to the party.
As for Toner, who was defeated in the 2013 provincial election by Liberal MLA Sam Sullivan, the party is shrugging off his defection. That move also doesn’t qualify as a crisis. But it’s another nagging concern.
Toner was inspired by a Jack Layton speech to join the party. But after he and the NDP lost, he was vocal about the NDP’s problems letting go of left-wing ideology and the need for a reboot.
When he announced for the Greens this week, it was obvious the NDP’s attempted rethink after the loss didn’t amount to much as far as he was concerned. He delivered a pat line about the NDP “trying to solve 1960s problems with 1990s people.”
His departure — and his arrival at the Green party — along with the donation drop are now on the list of things for New Democrats to worry about.
