14 Feb NDP leadership vote: Hacks, New Chapterists, & Dexter 2.0s

Over at his This Isn’t Journalism blog, Scott Gillard offers some acerbic observations on the NDP leadership vote, which takes place February 28 in Halifax. In no particular order, Gillard is a Glace Bay native, a good friend of mine, an NDP supporter who freely acknowledges the party’s flaws, and the proprietor of Boom12, a Halifax design and social media company whose clients include a Liberal MLA. He is one of Contrarian’s go-to people for shrewd observations on Nova Scotia politics.

“The NDP,” he writes, “is caught up in something of an existential crisis both provincially and federally.”

As [far] the Nova Scotia leadership race is concerned, there are two groups: the Dexter 2.0 crew and, as leadership candidate Gary Burrill would call it, the New Chapterists. The Dexter 2.0 crew are primarily made up of Dexter government apologists, moderates, and Hacks. Meanwhile, the New Chapterists are made up of old school progressives, activists, and those who feel the NDP should be distinctly different from the other two parties.

The Dexter 2.0 crew have managed to maintain a hold on power internally. They’ve ensured very little changed after the 2013 election and made sure the leadership race was as far from the defeat as possible. They hoped short memories may prevail. But they were unable to predict that their model would lead to the much more recent defeat of the federal party by the Liberals.

One small group from the Dexter crew, the Hacks, are those whose politics are less defined by ideals and beliefs and more defined by the game. They’re the people who make decisions based on perceived electoral consequence. That is to say the lens they’re looking through comes down to whether a decision will score electoral points. This is an ends-justify-the-means crowd. They think people like the New Chapterists are the problem, caught up in achieving things like social justice, instead of electoral success.

Three thousand New Democrats have registered to vote in the election. Perhaps 2,000 will do so, casting preferential ballots listing first and second choices.

The candidates are:

• United Church minister Gary Burrill, a New Chapterist from the party’s left wing who won a seemingly hopelessly Conservative seat in the 2009 NDP sweep, then lost it in the 2013 Liberal landslide. Dexter pointedly did not elevate him to cabinet.
• Dave Wilson, a thrice-elected Dexter loyalist who holds one of the safest NDP seats in the province. Known as the Dexter 2.0 candidate, he served as Minister of Culture, Heritage, and Fitness, and later, briefly, as Minister of Health.
• Lenore Zann, an actress who proved herself an effective retail politician by capturing the traditionally Conservative Truro riding in 2009, and holding it through the 2013 Liberal landslide. She, too, was left out of cabinet.

Wilson carries the endorsement of almost every party establishment figure, but this may hurt him with rank-and-file members still seething over the Dexter Government’s ineptitude.

Assuming no one comes close to winning a majority of first-place votes, second-place markers will decide the contest, a fact that may work to Zann’s advantage. Her supporters and Burrill’s, united in dislike for the party establishment, will give the lion’s share of their second place votes to each other. Wilson’s supporters probably prefer Zann to Burrill, whom they regard, not inaccurately, as the candidate of the most diehard Dexter-haters.

It’s worth remembering that the new leader, whoever it turns out to be, will never become premier. They will be a placeholder-leader, charged with beginning the long recovery from the Dexter debacle.