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VICTORIA — When candidate nominations closed last week for the May 9 provincial election, the B.C. Conservatives were in greatly reduced circumstances from the last time out.

The Conservatives nominated just 10 candidates by the April 18 deadline, a far cry from 2013 when the party made its strongest showing in decades by fielding 56 candidates.

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Those were heady days for the stand alone provincial party. In the year before the 2013 vote, they briefly pulled even with the B.C. Liberals in the opinion polls and, just as briefly, played host to an MLA defector from the government side.

The showing earned party leader John Cummins a seat at the election debates alongside Premier Christy Clark and the then leaders of the NDP and the Greens (Adrian Dix and Jane Sterk).

But with the cameras on, ex-MP Cummins faltered. But the party had other problems as well, including ill-advised comments on social media, internal discontent and that the Federal Conservatives insisted a vote for the B.C. Liberals was the only way to keep out the B.C. NDP.