Blaine Higgs, a visitor to the PC Party, may soon be shown the door
CBC
Blaine Higgs has always been something of an awkward visitor in the Progressive Conservative Party.
He's like that person who shows up at a house party as a virtual stranger or a new acquaintance barely known to the hosts.
They liven up the evening, but sometimes the party-goers look askance when they become disruptive.
"I did not grow up in a political family," Higgs said when he launched his campaign to win the PC leadership in 2016. "I did not come from deep roots politically."
Higgs had served one term as finance minister in a previous Tory government, but prior to 2010 never held elective office and hadn't even been a PC Party member.
He portrayed himself — accurately — as an outsider, the kind of person the party and the province needed to lead what he called "a movement" to save New Brunswick.
"I have the independence of thinking this province desperately needs," he said.
Now Higgs faces a push from within for a leadership review, with more than half of party riding presidents signing letters to trigger the process.
And his willingness to defy long-established partisan norms is coming back to haunt him.
As minister of finance from 2010 to 2014, that willingness to question the conventional wisdom of party politics was often bracing and refreshing.
He uttered uncomfortable truths that political veterans never acknowledged: that expensive, poorly thought out campaign promises were responsible for a large part of the province's big deficits and debt.
"It's a case when politicians are the most vulnerable, and people say 'I'll get him to promise this,'" he said.
Another example was Higgs's refusal to endorse Premier David Alward's patronage appointment of cabinet minister Margaret-Ann Blaney to a plush Crown CEO job.
Longtime party stalwarts simply don't do that. They fall in line.
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