When political parties look to field a roster of candidates, there can often be a tug of war between the national or provincial officials and the local riding associations.
The two sides can sometimes look for very different things in a candidate. For example, the head office wants to parachute somebody into a riding while the locals want somebody from their own community.
Often, the local riding associations will have better on-the-ground knowledge of a candidate from their own community. Sometimes head office listens, sometimes they don’t.
It appears that in the case of Karen Wang, national officials for the Liberal Party of Canada didn’t listen to what some in the Burnaby South riding association was telling them.
A source in the Burnaby South association – who didn’t want their name used – told me this morning that local Liberals warned national Liberal officials about potential trouble with Wang, currently embroiled in a controversy over a social media post that dragged race into the byelection.
“We told the party she’s hard to handle,” the source told me.
Alas, they didn’t listen and she was nominated as the candidate to run against federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh.
I wrote a blog yesterday about how there were warning signs from her ineffective run for the BC Liberals in Burnaby-Deer Lake – she pulled a silly no-show at an all-candidates meeting and was pretty much invisible during the campaign.
Perhaps the federal Liberals wished she had remained equally invisible.
Today, Wang dropped another bombshell by releasing a letter she had written to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, saying she was withdrawing her resignation. She wants another chance.
That request has been quickly rejected by the Liberals, but Wang is scheduled to hold a press conference today at 1 p.m. at the Burnaby public library next to Metrotown. Maybe she’ll decide she wants to run as an independent.
We’ll be there to see if she shows up.
Follow Chris Campbell on Twitter @shinebox44
