Enters Politics
Bennett tried for the British Columbia Conservative Party's South Okanagan nomination for the 1937 provincial election, but was unsuccessful. For the 1941 election, he won the nomination and entered provincial politics as the Conservative member of the British Columbia Legislative Assembly for South Okanagan. Following the election, the Conservative and Liberal parties voted to henceforth govern in coalition, an arrangement formally titled the British Columbia Coalition Organization.
As a coalitionist, Bennett was re-elected in 1945, but vacated the seat in 1948 in order to run, unsuccessfully, as Progressive Conservative candidate in the Yale federal by-election of that year. Regaining the Coalition nomination for the South Okanagan seat, Bennett was returned to the British Columbia Legislative Assembly in the 1949 provincial election.
After failing in his bid to become leader of the provincial Progressive Conservative Party in 1951, he left the party to sit as an independent member. In December of that year, he took out a membership in the Social Credit League.
Read more about this topic: W. A. C. Bennett
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