British Columbia Conservative Leader John Rustad reflected this week when asked how he could have gotten his party over the finish line and into a 47-seat majority in the provincial election campaign , rather than an opposition of 44 seats.

“Well, I think there’s an old saying in politics that you don’t lose elections, you run out of time,” he said.

During the Conservative campaign, time and money ran out at key moments.

The Conservatives only secured a $5 million bank loan to fund their campaign hours after BC United leader Kevin Falcon announced he was suspending his efforts and throwing his support behind the Conservatives on August 28.

That meant a stampede.

Among the items that couldn’t be assembled in time — a million two-pronged flyers with targeted hyperlocal messaging on issues like SOGI, forestry and vote-splitting — in key ridings like Surrey-Guildford , downtown Surrey, Vernon-Lumby and Richmond-Steston.

The Conservatives lost all these ridings. In some cases, the leaflets arrived two days after Election Day on October 19.

Would they have made a big difference? Probably not. But in Surrey-Guildford, where the NDP flipped the riding by 27 votes, who knows. This is, however, an example of a party not being able to allocate the desired resources to critical areas.

Falcon’s decision to interrupt BC United’s election campaign to avoid a vote split between the center-right and the center-right also came too late, Rustad said.

“It would have been great if this could have happened three months earlier,” Rustad said. “That would have given us time to be able to do a bunch of things.”

However, three months earlier, Falcon openly mocked Rustad. When Falcon abruptly ended his campaign on August 28, without consulting his team, some candidates were so angry that they decided to run anyway.

The Conservatives had the opportunity to select United candidates – and in many cases they made the wrong decision not to do so.

In Richmond-Steveston, the Conservatives refused the candidacy of Jackie Lee, United’s candidate. He then garnered 2,354 votes as an independent, edging out less impressive Conservative candidate Michelle Mollineaux and handing the riding to the NDP’s Kelly Greene by 484 votes.

Same thing in Vernon-Lumby, where United candidate Kevin Acton, mayor of Lumby, received 4,266 votes, bringing Conservative Dennis Giesbrecht to his knees and giving the riding to Harwinder Sandhu of the NDP by 477 votes.

In both cases, the Conservatives could have won if they had opted for United’s candidate. Or, if Falcon had resigned earlier and eased the way with his caucus, perhaps the conservative candidate would not have faced a vote split.

But internal politics, personality conflicts, loyalty and ego prevented common sense from prevailing in the selection of conservative candidates.

“A lot of people were unhappy (with Falcon’s decision) and wanted to continue the fight,” Rustad said. “It’s unfortunate.”

Responsibility for candidates’ mistakes ultimately lies with Rustad. The same goes for verification failures. Even when the party reported outrageous comments on social media, Rustad did not fire the person.

The Conservatives could have ditched all their problem candidates in the United merger. But Rustad refused, citing his loyalty to those who joined the party early. This cost the Conservatives credibility in the long run, leaving a ton of political ammunition on the table for the NDP during the 28-day campaign.

Internally, the Conservatives also rushed to hire help from outside the province for things like voter identification. They started from scratch on voter identification, while the NDP and Greens had lists of supporters from previous elections.

The Conservatives spent $2 million on mass text messages targeting their supporters. But she could only afford to do that for about a month – once Falcon left the company and the loan came through.

The Conservatives claim to have turned out 80 percent of the people they identified to vote. But that’s only about half of the 910,180 people who voted for the Conservatives. The remaining 400,000 to 500,000 Conservative voters remain a mystery to the party. So while he increased his vote by 189 percent from 2020, he only knows who half of those voters are going forward.

The Conservatives also misjudged their 30-seat goal – but so did the NDP, as both parties grappled with an angry and changing electorate.

The Conservatives are currently reviewing their campaign, as well as a new round of polls to see how their advertising efforts fared. One could conclude that this election could have been won if the party had made different choices.

“The unfortunate thing is that maybe we needed more time to be able to communicate, especially with people in the province who maybe hadn’t heard the message and what we were trying to accomplish in this province,” Rustad said.

“So we’re going to do some analysis and work on that, and look at what kinds of issues were a barrier for people who didn’t vote for us, in light of, you know, the fact that there might be elections at any time.

The NDP and Greens will likely do their own campaign post-mortem. Neither achieved what they set out to achieve, with the NDP losing 15 incumbents (including five ministers) and the Greens failing to elect their leader Sonia Furstenau in Victoria-Beacon Hill.

The Conservatives had the most to gain, and they did – going from zero MPs in 2020 to 44 elected this month. But they did not succeed, even though all the ingredients were there to really win.

Rob Shaw has spent more than 16 years covering BC politics, now reporting for CHEK News and writing for Glacier Media. He is co-author of the national best-selling book A Matter of Confidence, host of the weekly Political Capital podcast and a regular guest on CBC Radio.

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