The B.C. NDP’s chief electoral officer has called for the party to disqualify Anjali Appadurai from the leadership campaign, clearing the way for David Eby to be the next premier.
Elizabeth Cull made the call to bar the climate activist, based on a finding of fraudulent memberships and improper co-ordination with environmental groups Dogwood B.C. and 350 Canada.
Cull’s report, obtained by Postmedia News, “determined that Ms. Appadurai engaged in serious improper conduct by co-ordinating with third parties, including Dogwood, that conducted membership drives on her behalf. … The harm from this misconduct cannot be remedied with any consequence short of disqualification of the Appadurai campaign.”
Cull, a former NDP cabinet minister, found that Dogwood used paid resources to sign up members for Appadurai “at her request” and accepted contributions from third parties to fund its advertising campaign in support of Appadurai.
“These expenses have not been counted toward Ms. Appadurai’s spending limit and involve contributions from ineligible contributors,” Cull wrote. “These are serious violations of the rules the B.C. NDP put in place to ensure this leadership contest was conducted fairly and on a level playing field.”
Cull concluded that Dogwood solicited fraudulent memberships and the group’s campaigns manager, Alexandra Woodsworth, “publicly and repeatedly encouraged members of other parties to join the B.C. NDP while she volunteered with the Appadurai campaign.”
Appadurai said in a statement Tuesday night she’s “disappointed but not surprised by the recommendation.”
“From the beginning of this race, however, there’s been a careful narrative cultivated online — an absurd story about a hostile takeover by outsiders,” she said. “The thousands of new members my campaign attracted have been treated with suspicion.”
Appadurai insists her campaign followed the rules.
“This recommendation of disqualification is the result of a biased and unlevel playing field, repeated changes in interpretation of the rules, and ultimately — an attempt to control a situation in which an underdog candidate out-organized the front-runner, signing up many more members in just 25 days,” she said.
The B.C. NDP executive will vote Wednesday night whether to uphold Cull’s decision, which it is expected to do.
B.C. NDP president Aaron Sumexheltza said in a statement Tuesday night that he can’t comment on Cull’s report which is a confidential internal document. However he said the party’s executive “reflects the diversity of people in our province. I know they want to ensure a fair process and take this responsibility seriously.”
Cull’s report said during spot checks of new membership applications, 72 per cent of people contacted were deemed to have valid memberships, 25 per cent were ineligible because they were members or supporters of other political parties and 2.5 per cent were ineligible because they did not pay their own membership fees.
Cull considered disallowing any new members who joined after Aug. 6, which is when Appadurai and Dogwood members held a Zoom meeting to determine if she could mount enough support to launch a leadership bid. However, Cull opted not to do this because she said it could risk disenfranchising the thousands of people who joined the party “in good faith and with a genuine desire to be a part of the B.C. NDP.”
Political watchers said before the decision was released Tuesday night that disqualifying Appadurai would be a public relations disaster for the party.
Hamish Telford, a political scientist with the University of the Fraser Valley, said Tuesday morning the NDP could face political consequences if they disqualify the 32-year-old climate activist.
“It hurts the NDP brand, particularly with a younger demographic, which is where they like to think that they have an advantage over the B.C. Liberals,” he said. “Those younger voters would similarly be distressed to see a young woman of colour disbarred in favour of a middle-aged white man, the establishment candidate. I think the optics of that would be terrible.”
Such a decision would also tarnish Eby’s win, Telford said, which was supposed to mark a generational shift from Horgan to a younger crop of NDP leaders.
“There would always be that asterisk beside his name about how he won this particular contest,” Telford said. “If he wins this by acclamation because they kick out the only other challenger, the NDP really transforms themselves into the party of the establishment.”
Kristine Wickner, a longtime NDP member and former president of the Shuswap NDP riding association, wrote an open letter to Cull and the party executive expressing her concern that attempts to delegitimize Appadurai’s campaign “only serves to delegitimize the B.C. NDP as a party that seemingly can’t run a leadership race without resorting to undemocratic political tactics.”
Wickner urged the party to let Appadurai run, saying the party is stronger when it welcomes new members and have “robust debates on the issues that matter.”
Eby, Vancouver-Point Grey MLA and former attorney general, has been criticized for failing to sign up as many members as Appadurai, putting his ambitions to succeed Horgan in jeopardy.
The party, which had about 11,000 memberships going into the race, has not confirmed how many new members have joined since the leadership race began.
Telford said the party “dug itself a hole” by letting its membership base fall to such low levels and Eby dug the hole further by getting a slow start on campaigning and assuming he had a lock on the leadership.
Political leadership campaigns are often fraught with allegations of fraudulent membership sign-ups and turmoil over which candidates to allow.
The B.C. Liberals rejected Aaron Gunn as a leadership candidate in 2021, after a review of his social media posts uncovered views the party said would be inconsistent with its “commitment to reconciliation, diversity and acceptance of all British Columbians.”
The party also had a membership audit before the Feb. 5, 2022 leadership vote after allegations of questionable sign-ups, including new members listing addresses in areas where there are no homes and some who had no idea they had been signed up as Liberal supporters.
The federal Conservatives disqualified Patrick Brown this summer over allegations he used money orders to purchase memberships.
During the NDP leadership campaign eventually won by Adrian Dix in 2011, NDP MLA Mable Elmore was caught on cellphone video stapling $10 bills to party membership forms, a violation of the Election Act which prohibits indirect political contributions. Those memberships were thrown out.
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