Not known for showing emotion, Rob Fleming let loose on election night. He punched the air, kissed women on both cheeks, hugged men with backslapping bonhomie.
On stage at the Crystal Ballroom of the staid Empress Hotel, he reached low to the ground and swept both arms skyward.
The crowd of fellow New Democrats roared its approval.
"Just trying to get people stoked up," Mr. Fleming said yesterday of his uncharacteristic exuberance.
For the next four years, his job will be to tamp down those same partisan emotions.
The Victoria city councillor, who, at age 33, already boasts an enviable political resume, is certain to become a prominent critic on the opposition bench.
A close ally of NDP Leader Carole James, Mr. Fleming represents the pragmatic ideal that she will be promoting to broaden her party's appeal. He has shown a deft touch in challenging the trade-union establishment without earning its enmity. He has also displayed a willingness to find common ground with Greens and Liberals on city council.
He won easy election in Victoria-Hillside as one of 33 NDP MLAs to challenge 46 Liberals led by Premier Gordon Campbell.
His tone is measured, his presentation cool. Policy animates him. In a party with a rich legacy of bombast, Mr. Fleming's quotes are as controversial as vanilla yogurt.
"Tuesday night was a vindication of Carole James's political instincts and beliefs as a consensus builder and a moderate politician," he said.
"As much as Gordon Campbell attacked the NDP as old and frightening and all the rest of it, Carole James passionately believes that B.C. needs to turn down the volume on its polarized politics and do things differently."
Mr. Fleming, who has the boy-next-door good looks of Matthew Modine, was greeted like a rock star on election night. Christina Rainey, a 73-year-old volunteer, worked 13 hours on Tuesday as a canvasser, scrutineer and poll captain, before waiting patiently in the crush of celebrants to be introduced to the candidate.
"I think he's a real decent person," she said. "I'd like to see him in Campbell's chair. I think he has what it takes."
The retiree joined Mr. Fleming's campaign even though she is not an NDP member.
Ms. Rainey came to admire Mr. Fleming from his two terms on city council.
He was elected to council six years ago while still a humanities student at the University of Victoria. Mr. Fleming showed strength as a vote-getter even as a rookie, finishing third behind two incumbents on the eight-seat council. He was re-elected on a so-called Red-Green slate, a possible harbinger of a future role for him as a go-between on the provincial scene.
"I think my track record on city council is as someone more interested in getting things done and doing the work of government," he said.
Under popular Mayor Alan Lowe, a Liberal, city council has been more pragmatic with "less emphasis on partisan jousting," Mr. Fleming said.
His own brand of pragmatism has angered some union members, as Mr. Fleming supported the building of a private arena to replace a city-owned rink. The city-owned building had unionized workers; the new rink does not.
Mr. Fleming approved the arrangement to prevent a new facility being built in the suburbs, which he feels would have led to sprawl and further traffic jams. "I felt I was putting the interests of the city first," he said.
On Tuesday, Mr. Fleming handily defeated Liberal incumbent Sheila Orr in a constituency of modest homes and three-story walkups. He took 12,832 votes to Ms. Orr's 6,507 in an area traditionally receptive to the NDP.
Mr. Fleming lives with his wife, Maura Parte, a former NDP president, and Lula, a dog named after the leftist Brazilian president, in Fernwood, the city's bohemian neighbourhood. The house is six blocks outside the border of his constituency, so his new MLA is Ms. James in Victoria-Beacon Hill.
Mr. Fleming has a romantic attachment to historic left-wing causes, especially the On-to-Ottawa Trek and the Spanish Republic. He befriended British folk-rocker Billy Bragg, who played a concert in Victoria to raise funds for a statue and plaque honouring the Canadian volunteers who fought for the Republic in Spain. The memorial to the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion is on the grounds of the legislature.
Mr. Fleming first walked the hallowed halls of the landmark legislature as a child on holiday with his parents, although he remembers the experience as being "less exciting than visiting the wax museum."
Born in Windsor, Ont., on Remembrance Day, 1971, Mr. Fleming moved with his family to the West Coast at age 3. As a student at Hillside Secondary, he discovered a passion for literature and politics.
A highlight was meeting NDP member of Parliament Svend Robinson at a high-school debating tournament.
He joined tens of thousands at Vancouver's annual peace march and demonstrated at a Shell station in the tony West Vancouver neighbourhood of Ambleside to protest against the company's investments in South Africa during the apartheid era.
As a teenager, he learned about lost causes by campaigning for the NDP in Capilano-Howe Sound in the 1988 federal election.
After graduating, he made parts at a machine shop, worked in construction for his brother-in-law and was offered an apprenticeship at an iron foundry in Victoria. Instead, he decided to return to school to become a teacher.
He had also become active with the International Socialists, an outgrowth of the NDP's radical Waffle wing that found much to admire in the writings of Trotsky. Mr. Fleming sold unwanted copies of the Socialist Worker newspaper on downtown street corners, an experience he describes as demoralizing. Over time, he drifted away from the group.
"You learn the world doesn't work that way," he said. "Ideology is such a turnoff. It doesn't fit with people's daily lives."
On campus, he became active in campaigns to ease the financial burden being placed on students.
He also realized the politics of exclusion were harmful to a cause.
"It seemed to me silly that some of the left-wingers didn't think we should talk to business and engineering students," he said. "They wrote them off. I thought, 'No way, these guys -- and girls -- are facing the same challenges as arts students.' ''
A heated political campaign at the University of Victoria pitting slates of left- and right-wing students saw many acts of minor vandalism in 1997. Mr. Fleming made the mistake of impersonating an electoral officer in a telephone call ordering janitors to tear down opposition campaign posters. He was disqualified as a candidate, then reinstated by student council. He won election to a post paying $19,000.
He said his political career has since been guided by what he learned in those frantic months of trickery and shenanigans.
"The lessons are: Never take yourself too seriously; have a sense of humour about things; show respect to your opponents."