Richard Cannings
With federal Conservatives and Liberals now having candidates in place, the NDP is also planning to nominate a local candidate in October.
“We have provisional approval for October 18, mid-October, and we’re hoping they will do a mail-in ballot,” said Vince Salvo, president of the riding association in the new district of South Okanagan West Kootenay (SOWK).
Salvo said the nomination date still needs to be approved by a national NDP committee, but the plan is to hold one meeting in Grand Forks and allow any NDP member in the riding to vote by mail-in ballot.
There will also be a number of all-candidates meetings throughout the riding in the lead-up to the nomination, Salvo said.
So far only two people have declared their intention to seek the NDP nomination.
Margaret Maximenko, of Christina Lake, announced in November that she is seeking the nomination and Richard Cannings of Penticton announced in January his intention to run.
Salvo said the party rules allow a person to declare their intention to seek the nomination up to 15 days before the nomination date.
However, as candidates must be vetted at the national level, in practical terms a last-minute candidate might not be vetted and placed on the mail-in ballot in time.
Salvo, who is neutral, said it is unlikely any new candidates will come forward.
“There were a number of people who said they were considering it and then for one reason or another they decided not to,” said Salvo. “Either they liked the candidates who had indicated already or they didn’t want to disrupt their lives.”
The NDP currently represents the federal riding of B.C. Southern Interior with MP Alex Atamanenko. Atamanenko announced last year that he will not seek another term.
The new SOWK riding roughly overlaps the existing riding of B.C. Southern Interior, but it adds Penticton, which tends to vote Conservative, and it loses the NDP stronghold of Nelson.
Margaret Maximenko plans to seek the federal NDP nomination (Photo supplied)
The Conservatives nominated Marshall Neufeld as their candidate at the end of July and the Liberals acclaimed Connie Denesiuk as their candidate at the same time.
Maximenko is a long-time political activist who has run and worked in various businesses throughout her career. She served as a regional district director in the 1990s.
Cannings is a well-known environmentalist who has authored a number of books on birds and nature. He ran unsuccessfully in the May 2013 provincial election in Penticton.
Under the federal fixed-election-date legislation, the election will be held Oct. 19, 2015. However, early elections were called in 2008 and 2011 and opposition parties want to have candidates in place in the event that Prime Minister Stephen Harper decides on an early election.
RICHARD McGUIRE
Osoyoos Times
