A third BC United candidate has left the party and is now throwing support behind John Rustad’s BC Conservatives.
Cariboo-Chilcotin MLA Lorne Doerkson defected to the Conservatives on May 31.
While visiting Cranbrook, BC United leader Kevin Falcon said Doerkson will have to defend his decision to his constituents.
“I’m disappointed in Lorne, but at the end of the day Lorne made that decision and he’ll have to defend it,” he said.
“To have someone that internally we’ve heard talk about how appalled he is by the BC Conservatives’ positions, especially on social conservative issues, to then walk over and join that party is obviously disappointing.”
The latest Angus Reid poll has the BC NDP sitting at 41 per cent support among those polled, the BC Conservatives at 30 per cent, BC United at 16 per cent and the BC Greens at 11 per cent.
Falcon said he’s not putting too much weight behind what the polls are saying.
“I think frankly that polls and all the pundits and stuff are nonsense,” he said.
“I’ll tell you what people care about. They care about outcomes, they care about results and they care about good competent people who can get in there and start fixing some of the challenges we face.”
But on June 3, Surrey South MLA Elenore Sturko announced she was leaving BC United and joining the Conservatives citing the party’s low popularity and Falcon not resonating with voters.
The next day a third candidate announced he would no longer be running for BC United.
Brandon Fonseca, who was set to run in Coquitlam-Maillardville, wrote on X that he could no longer support BC United and is now urging residents to vote Conservative even though he hasn’t officially joined the party.
“I therefore can no longer in good conscience stand as a candidate for Kevin Falcon’s BC United and allow David Eby to be re-elected due to a fractured free enterprise vote,” he said on the social media platform.
Falcon had proposed a non-competition agreement between the two parties to avoid splitting votes in the upcoming October election.
However, it was rejected by Rustad.
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