You could make the case that Mike Harcourt was the most electable leader the B.C. New Democratic Party has ever had.
A popular mayor of Vancouver, Mr. Harcourt is a progressive moderate. His skillful, steady handling of the city's affairs during his six years as His Worship made him less of a threat to the business community when he took over the leadership of the NDP in 1987.
An easygoing, former university basketball star, Mr. Harcourt offered a wide swath of voters in the middle of the political spectrum something the province's centre-left party had never really presented them with before: comfort and familiarity. More importantly, he gave people confidence that he and his party could manage the province's finances as ably as the so-called free-enterprise coalition that usually ran the store in B.C.
But after leading the New Democrats to electoral victory in 1991, Mr. Harcourt would take the fall for a political scandal not of his doing five years later. Against all odds, the party won another election in 1996 under the more mercurial, labour-friendly leadership of Glen Clark but that would be it.
The NDP has lost three elections in a row since. (Its overall record is a dismal 3-19). And now the party prepares for one of its most important leadership votes in its history on Sunday.
After insisting that he was not going to endorse any of the candidates seeking the leadership, Mr. Harcourt changed his mind. He felt this decision was too important for him to remain on the sidelines. So when he recently put his hand on the shoulder of candidate Mike Farnworth, it created waves inside the party.
On many levels, Mr. Harcourt's decision was not a huge surprise. Of the three leading candidates, Mr. Farnworth is the one who most represents the former NDP premier's own middle-of-the-road philosophy. Adrian Dix is seen to represent a more hardened, left-wing agenda that is far friendlier to unions than big corporations. John Horgan is seen to be somewhere in between Mr. Farnworth and Mr. Dix.
Mr. Harcourt believes that an ideological swing to the left is precisely the wrong direction for the party. "You go left, you get left out. It's not complicated," he says.
In Mr. Farnworth, he sees the candidate with the longest potential voter reach. "Mike lives in the suburbs, which is where 60 per cent of British Columbians live. I think it's key to have someone who understands the issues of the greatest percentage of people and who is a populist moderate, a unifier, a healer and a consensus builder."
And he could have said: "In the same way I was during my time as NDP leader."
It's not certain how much sway Mr. Harcourt still holds in the party. However, it would be difficult to imagine the person who gave the New Democrats the best chance of controlling power for a long time being ignored at such a critical moment in the party's history. Another loss by the NDP in the next election, especially a lopsided one, could be permanently debilitating. Still, there are many in the party who disagree with Mr. Harcourt's assessment and who feel that a sharp tack left is exactly what the NDP needs to do in order to excite people who didn't vote for the party in the last few elections because its "mushy-middle" platform didn't speak to them.
That is a view being promoted by Bill Tieleman, party strategist, activist, political commentator and Adrian Dix supporter who recently publicly dismissed Mr. Harcourt's blueprint to success. He contends it was the moderate policy agenda set by deposed NDP leader Carole James that cost the party victories in the 2005 and 2009 elections.
But was it Ms. James's temperate policy platform that hurt the NDP in 2005 or her disastrous decision - promoted by Mr. Tieleman - to oppose the Liberals' carbon tax? A move that ended up alienating the environmental wing of the party. Was it Ms. James's centre-weighted policy agenda that lost her the 2009 election or the lack of faith voters had in the NDP's ability to lead the province out of the mess left behind by the worldwide financial meltdown?
On the eve of the leadership vote, most see it as a two-person race. And Mr. Farnworth and Mr. Dix offer fairly distinctive visions for electoral success. The question is, will the party be able to rally behind the eventual winner?
"It has to," Mr. Harcourt says. "We have to be united going into the next election. We have a tough, tough opponent in Christy Clark. It's a critical election for us."
Indeed, the very future of the party could be at stake.