PENTICTON — The BC Conservative leadership race itself wasn’t divisive, but many of the characters involved in it were, and I think it’s a damn shame so many of them have no intention of reflecting on that.There have been several essays penned recently reflecting on the race. As I covered it as a reporter and watched it unfold from a fairly outside and impartial position, I thought it worth throwing my own observations into the oblivion.On the issues themselves, the race was, objectively, not divisive. In fact, it was about as far from divisive as it could’ve been.“We’re in violent agreement,” the candidates repeated many times over several debates.On DRIPA, SOGI, tariffs, the forestry sector, public safety, and a litany of other issues, there was very little, if any, discernible difference between the candidates or their positions.So how, then, did the race become remembered as a “divisive” one?I won’t claim to know the answer, but I do have some theories based on what I saw and heard from leadership campaign staff, volunteers, and the chronically online X crowd who, it turned out, actually exist.“Arrogant,” “mean,” “rude,” “bullies” — these were some of the terms used to describe backroom wheelers and dealers inside several of the Conservative Party of BC leadership campaigns..Almost invariably, the accusations were directed at campaign staff who “weren’t from BC.”It was a story I heard repeated so many times I eventually lost track.People were reluctant to name names, and I wasn’t particularly interested in hearing them. Leadership campaign and volunteer staff infighting isn’t great material for political reporting anyway, as it’s usually too inside-baseball for broad consumption. Furthermore, it’s impossible for me to fully verify those secondary sources, as I wasn’t in the room — nor did I want to be, based on what I’d heard.I nonetheless listened to the stories, recorded the interviews, heard the testimonies, and then hadn’t thought about it for a while.Until, that is, I started seeing some of the same people accused of being bullies go public about their own experience in the race, calling it “divisive” and “black-pilling” — exhausting and disillusioning.Thankfully, J.J. McCullough did call out the Elliott campaign, so I don’t have to. He hit the nail on the head:.“I don’t want to overstate things — it was close — but Caroline Elliott’s defeat in the BC Conservative race is a blow for a certain subculture of conservative consultants, staffers, and pundits who thought they had a dream vessel. They should now reflect on why they turn people off.”.When McCullough speaks of a particular “subculture of conservative consultants, staffers, and pundits,” he’s referring to a political caste.He had said as much during the race. He described Elliott as “consultant-made,” too slick, and reliant on “out-of-province organizers and handlers” — “a puppet of a certain dubious staffer-consultant industrial complex.”After she lost, he went further. The entire Canadian conservative “elite,” he wrote — “staffers, pundits, intellectuals (often one and the same)” — had treated her as their dream vessel.That parenthetical is the point. He means a small, overlapping world in which the same people write the columns, staff the war rooms, and then explain the race to everyone else.They move between Ottawa, Toronto, Alberta, and now BC. They are not a grassroots membership — but rather, they are, in effect, their own trade and industry, whose money is sometimes well-earned.In Elliott’s case, the cast was unusually visible (and loud).Before she had even said she was in, Ontario operative Kory Teneycke announced he was coming west to run the campaign. A “dream team” followed: Anthony Koch, Nick Kouvalis, Katy Merrifield, and others — Harper, Ford, Poilievre, and Rustad alumni stacked on one provincial candidate who had never been on a ballot.They boasted about raising $1 million, showed up to the debates in limousines, and after the debates shared pictures of themselves drinking in fancy hotel rooms like they were bona fide celebrities..Her Achilles’ heel: even though she was from BC, "they" were not. But even more than that, they “weren’t nice,” I am told.Say what you will about British Columbians. We’re a little kooky, a bit rough around the edges, hyperactive sometimes, scary, and tricky to figure out. But we’re also nice (this is especially true the further away you get from Vancouver).It’s a province full of whackos, yes, but niceness still goes a long way in BC politics.I’m told it began with the decision not to attend the Juno News debate in New Westminster.Many of the on-the-ground volunteer staff for the Elliott campaign, who had done the yeoman’s work knocking on doors and fundraising the million dollars, wanted her to attend. Her out-of-province political handlers disagreed..As Anthony Koch wrote in his own recent National Post reflection on the race: “because this is happening in the social media age, every disagreement would immediately become personal” — and it did.But what’s especially remarkable in the context of this particular race is that on policy (what I always thought politics was supposed to be about) there was hardly any disagreement at all.Everything was personal because, I was told, some people weren’t nice. .I find that extremely easy to believe, given we’re months removed from the leadership result and many people still aren’t being nice.Peter Milobar, MLA for Kamloops Centre, announced last Friday that he will sit as an Independent, saying his values “no longer align” with the direction of the party under leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay — making him the seventh MLA to resign or be removed from the Conservative caucus since the 2024 election.Milobar didn't say he left because people weren’t nice to him, but commentators have nonetheless speculated that comments directed at him and his family during the leadership race played at least some part.It's just the latest in a years-long trend of BC Conservatives appearing unable, or unwilling, to play nice..The good news about Peter Milobar leaving the BC Conservatives is that it’s business as usual for the BC Conservatives; the bad news about Milobar leaving is that it’s business as usual for the BC Conservatives. The really good news, though, is that it’s never too late to start being nice.Given that Conservatives keep losing in general elections in this country, maybe they should try that.
