Jeremy Valeriote is certainly familiar with close calls; he’s less familiar with coming out on the winning end of one.
Four years after coming within 60 votes of toppling incumbent Liberal MLA Jordan Sturdy, Valeriote won a tight race of his own Oct. 19, beating the upstart Conservatives’ Yuri Fulmer by less than three percentage points. Valeriote garnered 10,221 votes, representing 38.15 per cent of the initial count. Fulmer, meanwhile, had earned 9,554 votes, 35.66 per cent of the vote, while the BC NDP's Jen Ford garnered 7,017 votes and 26.19 per cent.
“I’m extremely grateful for the people that helped me get here and the voters of West Vancouver-Sea to Sky who saw a different way, and chose it,” Valeriote said when reached at his election watch party at Howe Sound Brewing in Squamish after the results were announced.
In the end, Sea to Sky voters went with their conscience on election night, countering what Valeriote called a two-party “binary narrative” that effectively boiled down one of the most unpredictable elections B.C. has ever seen to a choice between the governing NDP and the out-of-nowhere Conservatives.
“It just feels like the message that we need more Greens resonated here, and that’s really important. People see we are a serious party, we recommend science and evidence, we’re professional and capable of influence at all levels of the B.C. Legislature and I think that allowed us to move forward,” he said.
“I’m really sad about Sonia’s seat,” he went on, referring to Green Party Leader Sonia Furstenau losing in her Victoria-Beacon Hill riding, “and I think it reinforces that two-party narrative that I don’t think serves British Columbians and that we want to get away from.”
Valeriote fought through a related narrative his political opponents latched onto at every opportunity throughout his campaign, and one he will likely have to continue fighting once in office: that a Green in the legislature amidst a sea of orange or blue will not be able to affect major change in Victoria.
“We’ll see in the next few weeks if that narrative has any validity,” he said. “We don’t even know the results of tonight and where the final [seat] count lies and I think the speculation that I won’t be able to be effective or be of influence, I think it’s a mistaken understanding of what an MLA is, which is to serve the people of the riding and not necessarily be a part of the government or opposition.”
It's true that much remains to be seen with how the final balance of power will shake out in B.C. The provincial election turned out to be as close as pollsters predicted, with the final outcome sitting on a razor’s edge given that several races were too close to call late Saturday night. At press time, the NDP was projected to claim 46 seats—one shy of a majority—to the Conservatives’ 45, and the Greens’ two, Valeriote’s included. As it turns out, however, several of those close races will go to judicial recount—as the Sea to Sky’s did in 2020—with the final winner not determined until Oct. 26 to 28.
An ocean of difference
While only 667 votes separated Valeriote and Fulmer on election night, there was an ocean of difference between their respective campaigns. Fulmer relied on his economic acumen and message of financial prudence, where Valeriote focused on environmental innovation and his opposition to a Woodfibre LNG project and “sunset” fossil fuel industry that he believes should be left in the past. Fulmer was a political newcomer who only came on the scene in recent months, where Valeriote was a known entity throughout the corridor who began his campaign in earnest a year and a half ago.
“I think it showed a commitment to run again and finish the job that we started in 2020,” Valeriote said of his early campaigning. “It definitely put us in a good position and allowed me to meet with hundreds of people, attend meetings, and understand the riding better and made me a better candidate than I was in 2020.”
Although Fulmer undoubtedly turned some heads with his oratory skills and grasp of policy at the Oct. 1 Whistler All-Candidates Meeting, it may have been his relative lack of presence in the Sea to Sky that made the difference on election might. After missing an environmentally themed debate in Squamish to attend an economic forum with BC Green Leader Sonia Furstenau and former NDP Minister Moe Sahota, Fulmer skipped the Pemberton All-Candidates Meeting on Oct. 8, explaining he was focusing the remainder of his campaign “engaging with voters directly” door-to-door. (Days before Oct. 19, his campaign told Pique Fulmer would not be taking calls on election night, instead referring media to Conservative Leader John Rustad’s speech that night.)
Fulmer also had to contend with a party and leader whose social, Indigenous and environmental policies certainly rubbed a segment of British Columbians the wrong way. Fulmer got most defensive at the Oct. 1 debate in Whistler when asked about Rustad’s stance on COVID vaccines, climate change, and Indigenous land rights, which may have ultimately swayed voters who would have otherwise been drawn to his economic vision.
Splitting the progressive vote
Progressive voters in the Sea to Sky had a tough call to make on Oct. 19, especially those whose primary objective in the voting booth was keeping Conservatives out of office, an outcome that is essentially a toss-up at this stage. Do they vote for a Green candidate who came within a whisker of heading to Victoria in 2020, or a homegrown and highly accomplished NDP candidate who nonetheless belonged to a governing party that had left many British Columbians wanting these past seven years?
It was that dichotomy that arguably defined and, in some cases, dragged down Jen Ford’s bid for higher office in 2024. Undoubtedly the candidate with the most political experience, Ford, a three-term Whistler councillor, former Union of BC Municipalities president, Squamish-Lillooet Regional District chair, and Whistler Housing Authority board member, seemed at times caught between highlighting her extensive and laudable political record and relying too heavily on her party’s talking points.
Although her performance improved at the Squamish and Pemberton debates, Ford spent much of the Oct. 1 debate in front of a hometown Whistler crowd on her backfoot, often reading from her notes and at times interspersing her responses or questions to the other candidates with long pauses.
Even still, the Whistler councillor’s campaign drew a respectable response for a NDP party that has never had much success at the ballot box in the riding. (Ford did not immediately return a call and text requesting comment on election night.)
Question over conflict-of-interest looms
Another question that will follow Valeriote to Victoria, and one he was forced to address on the campaign trail, surrounds his apparent conflict of interest as an MLA given his wife Ginny Cullen’s role as the Resort Municipality of Whistler’s top staffer and Chief Administrative Officer.
It was an issue raised more than once at the Oct. 8 Pemberton All-Candidates’ Meeting, and one Valeriote will surely have to speak to in more detail now that he’s headed to the legislature.
“There is potential for conflict of interest, but we’re both professional engineers. We’re both professional people. We both have a strong sense of ethical and moral duty,” Valeriote said at the debate. “We know what the rules are about confidential information, and we absolutely respect that … This does happen in small communities, when people put on different hats and they have to be trusted to figure out which hat they’re wearing and compartmentalize that. I can do that, and I’ve shown I can do that for many years, and so has my spouse.”
Ford questioned Valeriote’s ability to represent the Sea to Sky in Victoria given the potential conflict.
“My experiences as a current elected official, three times elected in Whistler and at the SLRD, is that when we go to advocate with the province on behalf of our community, we take our MLA with us. Typically, that MLA provides support,” she said at the debate. “If that person can’t go, free of conflict, to that advocacy meeting, it’s a challenge for the local council.”
Voter turnout
In total, 26,794 voters cast their ballots amidst heavy downpours and flood warnings across the West Vancouver-Sea to Sky riding (although an unknown portion of those were advance ballots).
It's unknown at press time how many eligible voters there were in the riding, although in 2020, before its boundaries were changed, the riding counted 42,786 eligible voters.
If mail-in ballots are any indication, it's likely that, overall, B.C. tops the 54-per-cent voter turnout rate it saw in a pandemic-impacted 2020. Over six days this month, a record-breaking 1 million-plus advance ballots were cast, representing 28 per cent of all registered voters in the province.
