Keean Bexte@TheRealKeean
🟢 IMPORTANT UPDATE ON THE JUNO DEBATE:
Caroline Elliott initially committed to attend the only BC Conservative leadership debate taking place before the membership cutoff.
This is the moment members will decide who becomes the next Premier of British Columbia. It is a big deal.
Then things took a turn.
After agreeing to the date, format, and venue, Elliott’s campaign went ahead and bought out nearly every ticket to the venue. General admission was $50, VIP was $100. They cleared it out. Deep pockets. Impressive, I guess.
We weren’t going to let one campaign control the audience, so we moved the debate to a larger venue. Every campaign deserves a fair crowd.
No issue there.
At that point, Elliott backed out, and announced a mix & mingle event on the other side of the province.
This isn’t simply a matter of avoiding other candidates like Yuri Fulmer, Iain Black, Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Warren Hamm, or Peter Milobar. Campaigns make strategic decisions all the time.
This is about attempting to control access to voters, lighting a pile of cash on fire, then walking away when that failed.
We’re proceeding with the debate.
Elliott is welcome to reconsider. She will be treated fairly and given the same opportunity as everyone else.
But right now, voters are left with a simple question: Why try to block people from attending a debate?
If I were a donor, I’d want an answer to that.
And if this is how a campaign handles a debate, it raises bigger questions about how they would handle power
Every other candidate will be given a powerful, national platform to showcase their talent and ideas. Elliott is welcome to change her mind, again, and show up for the people that matter: people like you.
The Juno News audience is the largest in the nation, and are the only stakeholders in this whole leadership race that I actually care about. Our readers deserve to hear from the people that want to lead Canada's west coast out of years of NDP destruction.
I am excited, the cast of talent in this race is impressive, and I hope to see you there.
JunoDebate.com.
