Zak Mndebele is the former Director of Field Operations for BC Conservative candidate Paul Ratchford's campaign.Dear John,It is time to step down.Over the last two years, you have overseen tremendous successes as leader. You helped take a party that hadn’t won a single seat in 46 years, and led it to its greatest electoral outcome in over 70 and in addition, you did so while overseeing a diverse and occasionally unruly slate of candidates, and while managing an often chaotic growth process. Perhaps most remarkably, you did so while watching the party that expelled you face a historic collapse in support, and stood next to its leader as he graciously stepped aside to give you free rein to defeat the NDP. And at the end of it, you came within a handful of votes of securing a majority government. An astounding result for a party that had only a single MLA scarcely two years prior..RUSS: BC Conservatives need a leadership race right now.These are achievements to be proud of; indeed, they are achievements of historic magnificence. But if you remain leader, all this will be for nothing, and you will be known as the man who built and destroyed the BC Conservative Party, and ensured the entrenchment of a historically unprecedented NDP dynasty for years to come. Let’s first observe the landscape; when you contested the election a year ago, you came within two percentage points of the NDP in the popular vote, and within three seats of a majority government. Today, the latest polling has you seven points behind, with a projected NDP majority, and net favorability 27 points behind the Premier’s. .Under your leadership, the party went from raising $723,523.91 in the first three months of the year (less than $80,000 shy of the NDP), to raising $350,000 in the second quarter (less than half of the NDP, and roughly $150,000 over the Green Party). As you are no doubt aware, your party is also deeply in debt, and while relief may be on the horizon, your ability to fundraise looks increasingly bleak.Despite canvassing the province for months, only 1,268 out of roughly 8000 members voted in your leadership review, of which, you managed to secure roughly 900 supportive votes, which is hardly a ringing endorsement. These point to flagging enthusiasm among the voter base and the membership, each of which points to flagging confidence in your leadership..EDITORIAL: The conservative purge: How John Rustad's BC Conservatives are eradicating dissent.But perhaps these numbers fail to convince you. Perhaps, you might think, they only represent temporary challenges, a momentary dip in energy, and that future events will render them irrelevant. You may be thinking that the most certain path forward is to hold the line, weather the turbulence, and wait for a more favourable climate. To change captains in the middle of a storm, you might argue, risks causing the ship to founder, better to wait patiently, and allow the seas to calm.Fair enough. Let’s move closer to home..Over the last seven months, you have lost five MLAs. Two have formed their own party, and are currently outflanking you to the right. Three are independent, and two of the three represent the leftward end of your caucus. Both the right and the centre are now hostile, openly critical, and calling for your removal; as time goes on, the attacks from both sides will only intensify.In addition, your MLAs are whispering among themselves, openly challenging your leadership, and directly criticizing you in the media. Some are quietly preparing to replace you, while others are questioning the wisdom of remaining by your side. The details of your caucus meetings are being leaked, and despite your efforts to uncover the source, their identity continues to escape you (almost certainly because there are multiple, and large swathes of your caucus are complicit)..Rustad slammed for making allegations about MLA's mental health after she quits party, calls him out.In addition, your party is dropping staffers like flies; of those who remain, few have any confidence in your ability to lead the party to victory.How many MLAs do you think you will have by the end of the year, John? How many do you think will remain by this time next year? How long, do you think, before David Eby realizes how untenable your position is, and calls a snap election to strengthen his majority?Is it not clear that every move you have made to retain control — from ordering searches of your caucus members’ phones, to expelling dissenters, to impugning the mental fitness of a former critic, to your loyalists suggesting that the party board ought to be unilaterally removed, to other allegations yet unproven — have only left your reputation among the public, the party, and the caucus in tatters? Does any of the above inspire confidence that you are well positioned to accomplish anything of value over the next several months?.I believe you are a reasonable man. We have all found ourselves in positions where, due to a combination of factors, we felt it necessary to continue down a road we later realized we would have been better off avoiding. We all, by nature, wish to recover sunken costs wherever we find them; and yet, reasonable men know that it is best to avoid errors rather than persist in them.If you resign now, the past weeks’ events can be put behind us; the party will seek a new leader, will give itself a chance to renew before the next election, and may, in due time, restore the coalition you built and win government for the first time in over half a century. You will then be remembered as the man who built a machine out of nothing, and the current unpleasantness will fade into the background, to be replaced by the gratitude of the membership and the province. .EXCLUSIVE: Rustad won the battle — but he may lose the war.If, on the other hand, you remain, you will have the dubious honour of cementing another four years of NDP government over this province, of leading the party to a terrible and perhaps fatal defeat, and will go from being one of the most astonishing success stories in the province’s history to becoming one of its more remarkable examples of self-destructive political hubris. The choice, Mr. Rustad, is yours.Sincerely,Zak MndebeleZak Mndebele is the former Director of Field Operations for BC Conservative candidate Paul Ratchford's campaign.
