The province's two top parties have secured their Tri-City candidates in all but one riding for the May election.
In Port Coquitlam, neither the BC Liberals nor the BC NDP have set nomination dates for their contenders.
PoCo resident Wayne Marklund is the only Liberal to declare his intention to run against NDP incumbent Mike Farnworth.
A 2014 city council candidate who also ran for the BC Conservatives in Burnaby North in 2013, Marklund told The Tri-City News today (Thursday) that PoCo "is low on the agenda" for the party.
"It's a strong NDP riding," he said, adding, "We have to go through the process of allowing candidates to come forward. It's just a matter of time."
Marklund said he would ideally like to face one or two opponents in the nomination race.
A director-at-large for the PoCo BC Liberal riding association, Marklund said he has been volunteering at party events and signing up new members for several months in PoCo and in Burnaby, where he has a business, with the aim "to help the BC Liberals win a majority."
Farnworth told The Tri-City News he expects to be acclaimed sometime in March.
"The party spreads out the nominations between now and the dropping of the writ," he said today. "The closer we get to the election, the more high profile the nominations will be," noting former NDP leader Adrian Dix and current leader John Horgan will follow him.
"We have an election team in place. We are ready," Farnworth added.
Meanwhile, Horgan will be at Coquitlam's Evergreen Cultural Centre next Thursday to see NDP MLA Jodie Wickens acclaimed for the riding of Coquitlam-Burke Mountain.
The nomination meeting takes place exactly one year after she clinched the by-election to defeat the BC Liberals' Joan Isaacs; the pair is on the ballot this spring after Isaacs was appointed the candidate last summer.
In Coquitlam-Maillardville, NDP MLA Selina Robinson will again square off against Liberal Steve Kim — after she won the seat by 41 votes, following a judicial recount in 2013 — while, in Port Moody-Coquitlam, BC Liberal MLA Linda Reimer is up against Port Moody Coun. Rick Glumac, who was contested at NDP nomination last November by Adel Gamar, a former policy fellow at Harvard Law School who occasionally writes columns for The Tri-City News.
The BC Greens continue to search for candidates in the Tri-Cities' four ridings.
The 41st B.C. election is tentatively scheduled for May 9.
jcleugh@tricitynews.com
