The Written Word
for April 18, 2001

Today Premier Dosanjh- more correctly Lieutenant-Governor Garde Gardom, my old colleague from the Bill Bennett days – called an election for May 16^th next and it couldn’t help but recall for me the two provincial elections I ran in – December 1975 and May 1979.

I had been nominated for the Social Credit Party on March 17, 1975 after a very tough race that saw some 1500 people show up at Kamloops Senior Secondary High School for the nomination which I won on the first ballot – there were three other candidates. It was a hell of a race and I had a superb team that got me the nomination. I then had to wait for the election call which came, somewhat surprisingly in November of that year. Dave Barrett was barely into the fourth year of his mandate and we were rather expecting a vote in April or May of 1976. This was interesting because my nomination was good for a year only and two of the three I had ran against were – and in politics this is a compliment – poor losers and would have loved to, in golf parlance, "pressed the bet" and had another go.

When the writ was dropped the Constituency president, a fine but somewhat restrained chap named Joe Tonin sort of appointed himself the campaign manager. We were green as grass and it never occurred to me that he, having supported one of my rivals, might not have been my best choice. In fact though I would later permit no rival to be in a close position to the campaign on the basis that they likely had a death wish for me, in Joe’s case I harboured no such thoughts, not should I have, because he was the original straight shooter who would have died in getting me elected. In fact he damned near did that suffering a stroke in the second week. That brought Bud Smith, the best political brain (later Attorney-General in the Vander Zalm government) in the world as far as I am concerned.

Bud knew his man. Despite being a lawyer, I was green as grass. And I had a temper with the ever present desire to draw my revolver and shoot at the first provocation. And election campaigns bring lots of provocations!

Bud had a plan. He commandeered a lovely man named Don Duncan to be my driver.

The old Kamloops constituency – it’s since been split in two – went up the North Thompson damn near to Valemount and in the south and west included Savona and Logan Lake. The drill was that whenever I looked like I was going to retaliate to kill, Don would take me on the road to campaign, usually up the North Thompson to Barriere, Clearwater, Little Fort, and Blue River. And Don was marvelous. He had campaigned for Davie Fulton, the long time Conservative MP and would always tell me, after a meeting, that I had far more people out than Mr Fulton ever had. And Don was just the sort of lousy counter a candidate with his tender ego needed. We would have a meeting in Blue River with perhaps 30 in attendance – which after all was about half the adult population – and he would say "Rafe … I’ve never seen anything like it. Imagine 76 to a meeting in Blue River!" "Don", I would remonstrate, "there weren’t 25 people there!" "Oh, Rafe", he would say, "you didn’t see the people in the back and in the coffee room, blah, blah, blah".

I knew he was fibbing but they were just the fibs you needed!

The trouble was, Don was about as bad a driver as I have ever seen! I would come back from these trips – which were frequent - with my spirits high but with my wits scared out of me!

It was a great time, it has great memories especially since I won very handily.

The second campaign was quite different. For one thing, I was nominated by acclamation. In fact when the writ was dropped I asked my constituency secretary if anyone planned to run against me for the nomination. She said no. I told her to rent the smallest meeting room in the Stockmen’s Hotel, have it jammed with my supporters an hour before the meeting and I would buy the drinks! With democracy, you can never be too careful!

I had been a cabinet minister for the entire time and at election time was Environment Minister. At the time about the only concrete issue was uranium mining and Premier Bill Bennett had me campaigning all over the province – and in his own riding especially – allaying concerns that everyone was going to be glowing in the dark! I campaigned everywhere but in Kamloops and arrived home with five days to go before polling day. I suddenly got that feeling in the pit of my tummy that a politician knows so well. I was in trouble. As I walked down Victoria Street, the main street, I could see in peoples eyes that I was by no means any longer in a "safe" seat, if I ever had been.

Bud – and my wonderful secretary, later my executive assistant, Sandra Moskwa – went to work. No one could possibly have done so many radio and television shows, snipped so many ribbons, knocked on so many doors and shook so many shoppers hands in malls as I did in those five days.

It worked – I won again very nicely but as Wellington said after Waterloo, it was a damned near run thing.

Those thoughts came running back into my mind as the writ was dropped and I realized that some 300-400 candidates, all with the same hopes and ambitions I had, strike out into the unknown wonders of an election campaign.