Andrew Weaver is the acclaimed BC Green Party candidate for Oak Bay-Gordon Head riding.
“The constituents in Oak Bay-Gordon Head are very, very special. They care passionately and deeply about politics and issues. They’re not afraid to tell you what they think whether they support you or they don’t support you,” Weaver told supporters who celebrated the acclamation and launch of his campaign at the Penny Farthing Pub Tuesday evening.
“But they’re engaged, and you always know you’ll get an opinion when you ask people. I love that, I love being challenged.”
Weaver has served as MLA since 2013 when the University of Victoria climate scientist and Nobel Prize co-winner ousted incumbent Liberal and veteran cabinet minister Ida Chong to earn his party’s first seat in the B.C. legislature.
“I was pulling teeth from lions six months ago when I was trying to get people to sign up to the Greens,” Weaver said. “Then this tipping point happened, and it happened about three weeks ago, when they started coming to me.”
Weaver promises “phenomenal candidates who are very much like me. They’re not career politicians; they want to give back.”
Candidates are “so authentic they’ll be wearing Hawaiian shirts to functions when they should be wearing ties,” he said, gesturing to his own printed shirt.
“They’re emerging and rising and coming up to us and saying, ‘I want to run with you now.’”
Late last year Weaver was named leader of the BC Green Party. He was the sole applicant for the role and members expressed a desire to have a permanent leader in place for a pair of Lower Mainland by-elections. Weaver got the early nod from the BC Green Party provincial council that unanimously voted to acclaim the leader several months early.
For his own campaign, Weaver introduced his team to Oak Bay supporters.
“The secret to success in anything you do, whether it be science or politics, is you find the smartest people you can and you surround yourself with them and you let them do what they do well and you get out of the way so that they can do it. Your job is to protect them from what invariably rolls down hill … to allow them to be creative, innovative and everyone succeeds,” he said. “It worked at UVic in the lab and it worked in the legislature.”