Rookie MLA Judy Darcy is content to continue serving her constituents in New Westminster.
Darcy, elected as New Westminster’s MLA in the May 2013 provincial election, has announced she won’t be seeking the NDP leadership.
"I have had a lot of people urging me to run, people in New West and people across the province. But I just kept coming back to the fact that I love what I am doing,” she told The Record. “When people say, ‘we really want to talk to you about this, we think you should run,’ you have to honour people and take the time to consider it. My head has said you need to give this serious consideration; my heart has said I love my job, I love being the MLA for New Westminster and representing the community. I love being health critic. I really don’t want to give that up.”
Darcy said she hasn’t been encouraging any of her peers in Victoria to seek the NDP leadership and will wait to see who throws their name into the hat.
“I am sure a lot of good people will put their names forward,” she said. “I certainly haven’t committed my support to anybody yet, because quite frankly I don’t’ know who is running.”
After an “enormously disappointing” loss in the provincial election, NDP leader Adrian Dix announced in September that he would step down as leader when the party holds a leadership convention. The party will hold its leadership convention in September 2014.
“Nobody has declared. The rules have just been announced, the date has just been announced,” she said. “It the end of September. From the minute you declare, you are off and running. It would be very intense for that entire period of time.”
Darcy anticipates that people will be announcing they’ll seek the NDP leadership over the next few weeks, but she won’t be one of them.
“There are people who come through the door of this constituency office constantly seeking our help. Just the kind of community New Westminster is, I just want to continue to devote my full energy to that,” she said. “Being health critic is also very challenging – it’s a big job. I want to devote my full energies to doing what I am doing.”
