In western Canada, British Columbia (BC) is about to get a new premier. Since 2017, the nominally center-left New Democratic Party (NDP) has ruled the province, first as a minority government that was kept in power through an agreement with the Green Party, then as a majority government following the NDP’s landslide election victory in 2020. The current premier, John Horgan, announced in June he was stepping down after undergoing treatment for throat cancer, triggering a BC NDP, leadership race whose winner will take over the premier’s office in December.

For several weeks, former attorney general and minister responsible for housing David Eby was the contest’s sole candidate. A lawyer who was considered by some to represent the party’s progressive wing, Eby has run a campaign carrying the banner of the status quo, essentially pledging that the government’s direction will not fundamentally change if he wins. He has the support of forty-eight of the NDP’s fifty-seven members of the provincial legislative assembly.

Then in August, climate justice activist Anjali Appadurai, who previously ran for the NDP in Vancouver in the 2021 federal election, threw her hat into the ring — much to Eby’s annoyance.