The arrest of Premier Gordon Campbell in Hawaii in January for drunk driving, and the embarrassing police mugshots of the premier that appeared in the media across the country, have raised the question whether a convicted felon should hold senior public office. For the time being, the premier has apologized for his conduct and has made clear his intention to continue in office. Polls indicate that many people support his decision. At the same time, other people believe Campbell has been so deeply tainted by the drunk-driving affair that he will have no choice but to resign sometime before the next provincial election in May 2005.

Since Premier Campbell's arrest, commentators have been quick to remind British Columbians that in the past two decades they have failed to elect a single premier who did not have to resign from office under a cloud. Three times the top politician in the province has been forced from office by scandal. At the moment, one has to go back twenty years, to the election of 1983, to find a premier, Bill Bennett, who served out his term and was re-elected by voters. Three years later Bennett left office, feeling that his government was so unpopular that the Social Credit Party could not win the next election with himself as leader. And so began two decades of scandal-plagued politics in the province.

First came Bill Vander Zalm. He succeeded Bennett as Social Credit leader and premier in 1986, affirming his party's choice by winning the provincial election later that year. But his term in government was turbulent, and ended when the conflict-of-interest commissioner ruled that Vander Zalm had violated conflict guidelines over the sale of his Fantasy Garden theme park to a Taiwanese billionaire. Vander Zalm left office in April 1991 on the same day the commissioner's report was released; he was later charged with criminal breach of trust but found not guilty.

	Michael Harcourt, premier of BC 1991–96.

Next came Mike Harcourt. Harcourt led his New Democratic Party to power in the election of October 1991, defeating Rita Johnston, who had stepped in as premier following Vander Zalm's departure. Gambling, not theme parks, turned out to be the NDP leader's Achilles heel. In Nanaimo, a non-profit society had been taking money raised for charitable causes and re-routing it into the coffers of the provincial NDP. In 1994, the society and three other NDP-linked organizations were convicted of gambling-related offences, but the issue, dubbed "Bingogate" by the press, would not go away. Finally, in February 1996, Harcourt decided to resign. He had not been implicated in the scandal at all, but as party leader he took responsibility for it.

Then came Glen Clark. Clark took over from Harcourt and managed to win a narrow election victory in May 1996. He was a completely different leader from his predecessor. Whereas Harcourt was a consensus-builder (some said too much so), Clark centralized decision-making and polarized opinion on most issues. He served in difficult economic times, and his popularity was dealt a severe blow by mismanagement of the construction of three "fast ferries" for the BC Ferry Corporation. But the final blow came on 2 March 1999 when police officers arrived at his Vancouver home with a search warrant and a television crew was on the spot with cameras rolling. Police were looking for evidence related to an investigation of an application for a casino license by a friend and neighbour of the premier. When it was revealed that Clark himself was under investigation by police he resigned from office and from the leadership of his party. (After a long trial he was cleared of all charges.)

The end result of the Glen Clark era was the landslide victory enjoyed by the Liberal Party in the 2001 provincial election. The Gordon Campbell-led Liberals captured 77 seats in the legislature, leaving the NDP with just two Vancouver seats. With such a huge majority, it looked as though Campbell was sure of becoming the first premier to win re-election in BC since 1983 when the next election occurs in two year's time. However, his drunk-driving charge, as well as the unpopularity of some of the government's austerity measures, now make the province's political future harder to predict. Will Gordon Campbell be able to break the re-election jinx, or will BC's zany style of politics claim another premier as victim? Stay tuned.