Why a Liberal-Green 'coalition campaign' to beat Higgs is an unlikely fantasy

Listen carefully: the New Brunswick Liberals are nervous. 

They're nervous that Green voters will deprive their party of a shot at beating Blaine Higgs's Progressive Conservatives in the provincial election this October.

You could hear it last weekend at the Liberal nominating convention for Hampton-Fundy-St. Martins candidate John Herron, who said he was attracting not only disgruntled PCs but "Green-inspired voters" to his campaign. 

"We want to make sure that we deliver this seat, so [we are] bringing everyone together to have the broadest coalition possible," he said. 

The Greens, of course, have a different take.

Herron's Green opponent, Laura Myers, says she's not running just to prevent a PC victory but to offer voters a real alternative to the old two-party system.

"You can't get what you want by voting for what you don't want," she said.

You could hear the same Liberal angst in a video by Pat Finnigan, the former federal Liberal MP for Miramichi-Grand Lake, explaining why some voters in Kent North are urging him to run provincially.

"Firstly, most people I talk to in the region, in the riding, want the Higgs government out," said Finnigan, who would be challenging incumbent Green MLA Kevin Arseneau.

Kendall Harrison is pitching an alternative to this Liberal-Green jostling. 

The self-described "data person" and keen follower of provincial politics who lives outside Fredericton says the two parties should run "a coalition campaign."

In January he wrote to Liberal Leader Susan Holt and Green Leader David Coon, pleading with them to consider an agreement to not run candidates against each other in key ridings — to ensure the PCs lose.

He offered to broker the deal over coffee and oat cakes. 

"I am asking the two of you as leader[s] to think more boldly than the false limits of party politics usually allow in our North American context," he wrote.