A candidate trying to win a BC Liberal nomination in Kelowna is frustrated that his party doesn't want him to debate his opponents.

Jack Pinder, a businessman and consultant who is in a three-way race for the Liberal nomination in the riding of Kelowna-Mission, is adamant on the need for an all-candidates debate.

“It’s a normal process to allow people to measure and get to know the (candidates),” he said. “All I want to do is have a normal, democratic process.”

But not all Liberals agree a debate is necessary for a party nomination race, where at the end of the day, all of the contestants are on the same team and their real enemy is the NDP.

One of Pinder’s opponents, hotelier and business columnist Maxine DeHart, said a nomination race is about signing up supporters as party members and then getting them to vote for you, not hashing out policy differences between the candidates.

And besides, she added, the Liberal party does not want to see a public airing of differences between the candidates.

"This is the thing. We were informed by the BC Liberal Party that they don’t want any debates during the nomination process," she said.

Her campaign chair, Vern Nielsen, said Pinder is just using the debate issue to kick up dust and draw attention because he should have known right from the beginning that an all-candidates debate was "never in the cards."

He explained that when the race began back in November, there were 10 potential candidates interested in going for the nomination. They, or their representatives, all attended a meeting chaired by Okanagan-Westside MLA Rick Thorpe (a former cabinet minister who is not running again but is the party’s election preparation co-chair) where the Liberal party laid out the ground rules.

“They were absolutely emphatic that there was no way there would be a debate,” Nielsen said. “In their experiences, debates tend to polarize factions of the party and can actually pull the party apart.”

Thorpe wouldn’t return a call asking for comment. His assistant said questions about the candidate nomination process should be put to the party’s director of communications.

The other Kelowna-Mission candidate, B.C. agriculture council executive director Steve Thomson, said he would support a “forum” where the candidates answer questions from party members but not a “debate” where the candidates face off against one another.

“We think that we would be more than willing to participate in a forum organized by the riding association and we think it would be useful for the members,” he said.

While the Kelowna-Mission Liberal riding association is not organizing a debate between the candidates, it did organize a meet and greet, where party members could mingle and chat up the candidates.

There were no speeches from the candidates but they were invited to make a four minute video to be screened at the event. DeHart and Thomson took up the invitation and had their submissions introduced by their campaign chairs.

Pinder refused.

“I disagree with a video, a pre-polished, pre-rehearsed, marketing tool, basically,” he said.

He added that party organizers refused to let him talk from the podium for four minutes instead of presenting a video or to even allow his campaign chair to address the crowd without a video to introduce.

“I’m not looking for some pre-rehearsed video that tells you nothing. It doesn’t tell you the character of the person, it doesn’t tell you the strength of the person. It doesn’t tell you their knowledge base or what they’ve really accomplished,” he said. “You don’t get to measure how quickly they can answer questions.”

We went on to say that he was probably the least well known of the three candidates and that the only way he was going to demonstrate why he was the best choice for the job “is by having some type of open forum.”

And so Pinder is organizing –and paying for– his own forum, to be held two days before Kelowna-Mission Liberals vote on who they want to represent them in the upcoming election.

The other two candidates say they will participate only in events sanctioned by the riding association.

So far, the riding association’s president, lawyer Jock Craddock, has not returned calls asking if the riding association is willing to sanction Pinder’s forum. But at the meet and greet, he told the Kelowna Capital News he didn’t anticipate any other events being held before the nomination vote.

Adrian Nieoczym is a reporter for the Kelowna Capital News and regular contributor to The Hook and The Tyee.