Furey follows tradition: All of N.L.'s elected premiers have resigned while still in office

When Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Andrew Furey announced his resignation on Tuesday, he joined a long line of N.L. leaders who got out of politics while the going was good.

Every Newfoundland and Labrador premier who has been elected has resigned while still in office.

But the premiers who've lost their mandate at the polls have almost always been installed at a leadership convention while their party was already in power.

By looking at this history of resignations, can we make any predictions about the future of the Liberal government in our province after Furey's departure?

Furey is ending his political career on a high note. According to a November 2024, poll by Narrative Research, the majority of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians are satisfied with his government's performance.

That may have something to do with several recent high-profile successes, including Furey's December negotiation of a memorandum of understanding with Quebec for a new deal on the power generated by the Churchill Falls hydroelectric station in Labrador.

The circumstances recall a similar move by former Progressive Conservative premier Danny Williams. It was surprise resignation at the end of 2010, announced one week after he signed an agreement with Nova Scotia to develop a hydroelectric dam at Muskrat Falls on Labrador's Lower Churchill River.

Like Furey's MOU, the Williams Lower Churchill deal was touted as a righting of past wrongs, specifically the 1969 Upper Churchill agreement that requires Newfoundland and Labrador to provide power to Quebec at below-market rates for a term of 65 years.

Muskrat Falls ultimately ran so far over budget it could only be described by reviving the near-obsolete term "boondoggle," but when ink was first put to paper the development was still rich with promise.

Williams retired from politics at the height of his popularity. Even before the deal, his government had been enjoying record support, boasting 93 per cent voter satisfaction.

Kathy Dunderdale replaced him as premier and rode the public approval to her own majority government within the year.

Not every successor to a resigning premier fares so well.

Liberal premier Brian Tobin, who oversaw a period of economic renewal in the province, also enjoyed solid approval ratings for much of his four-year tenure. 

His departure from provincial politics just twenty months into his second term to re-enter the federal arena, though, wasn't well received. It gave the public the impression his premiership had been merely a strategy to position himself for a run at the role of prime minister.

After Roger Grimes was chosen to succeed Tobin at a Liberal leadership convention, he waited more than two years before calling an election, furthering angering the electorate, and he suffered a resounding defeat at the ballot box.

The popularity of outgoing premiers can certainly help their replacements retain the government, but it isn't essential.

Flagging public approval under Clyde Wells in the 1990s and Dwight Ball in the 2010s was given a shot in the arm by their energetic successors — Tobin and Furey — who went on to electoral success.

A clean transition to a new leader, on the other hand, has been imperative. 

Premiers Tom Rideout, Roger Grimes and Paul Davis were all embroiled in hotly contested party leadership races after the resignation of their predecessors. Each of them edged out a victory over another strong contender.

Being so fiercely challenged on their fitness to govern in the context of a leadership race may have eroded public trust before they even went to the polls, and Rideout and Davis, at least, were already facing an uphill battle, having taken the reins of governments with low approval ratings.

Newfoundland and Labrador's government has flipped parties just four times in the 76 years since the province joined Confederation.

Rideout, Grimes and Davis presided over the defeats of three of those governments, and all of them were appointed premiers who had never led their party through a general election.

The fourth changeover was a special case — a near-tie in 1971 between the Liberals under incumbent premier Joey Smallwood and the Progressive Conservatives under leader Frank Moores.

The Progressive Conservatives had won 21 seats, the Liberals 20, and the New Labrador Party one.

Twenty-one seats wasn't enough to form a government. Once the PCs appointed a speaker, who would be unable to vote except in the case of a tie, they wouldn't have enough members to out-vote their opposition.

In six districts, the races were so tight the candidates requested recounts, and, while all parties awaited the final results, Smallwood refused to cede the premiership to Moores.

After ushering what was then the Dominion of Newfoundland into Confederation and serving as the fledgling province's first premier for 22 years, Smallwood was reluctant to relinquish his leadership and had hemmed and hawed over retirement for years.

It wasn't until a judge formally confirmed the election results in January 1972 that Smallwood finally stepped down and Moores was sworn in as premier.

This makes Smallwood the only premier in the province's history to have both lost the government through an election and resigned while still in office.

Furey's successor can take some notes from the past. The government's current popularity should help them at the polls, and the fact that Furey says he's retiring from politics should keep any future political ambitions from hurting them.

If they can secure the Liberal leadership without close competition and call a general election promptly, they may be able to hold the government and become the next premier of Newfoundland and Labrador to have the opportunity to quit while they're ahead.

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