Vision nomination curbs unite-the-left campaign
Vision Vancouver’s decision to hold a nomination race for a mayoral candidate deals a potential blow to “unite-the-left” efforts by the city’s civic parties to avoid splits that could deliver rival Non-Partisan Association candidates an advantage in elections this fall.
Part of the effort, being brokered by the Vancouver and District Labour Council, was to find an independent candidate that other participants, including the Green party, Coalition of Progressive Electors and One City, could endorse to rally the so-called progressive vote.
On Tuesday, labour council president Stephen Von Sychowski said they don’t feel “like a wrench is thrown into” those efforts by Vision’s decision, since discussions between parties about co-operating on council and school and park board candidates continue.
“The mayor question is still very much open,” Von Sychowski said, considering several names have come forward, including independents and party candidates. “We’re a ways off from taking a position on that.”
Candidates and parties on the progressive side, however, were left disappointed by Vision’s decision, which was wasn’t collaborative, in the words of Green party mayoral hopeful Adriane Carr.
Carr, who was polling as the potential candidate with the most support in Research Co. surveys, said she hasn’t decided whether she will stand as a candidate for mayor.
“It was a very different kind of announcement than mine,” said Carr, who had reached out to say she was “ready, willing and able to run, ( but is) seeking a minimum of non-competition from other candidates, not looking to state I’m running (as a Green candidate).”
“Their statement, ‘We’re running a candidate as Vision,’ seems far from collaborative and that’s been the theme of politics on the centre left” since last October’s municipal byelection, Carr said.
Vision remains committed to working with that unite-the-left effort, according to an emailed statement from Vision co-chairman Michael Haack, but the party reached a point where it felt it had to act on the question of its own mayoral hopes.
“(We) felt is was important to canvass the political landscape in advance of making a decision to open nominations for a Vision candidate,” Haack said in his statement to Postmedia News.
“However, the calibre of potential candidates for mayor for Vision was simply too high for our board to ignore,” he added, without indicating which candidates have expressed interest. “We’ll leave it to our members to decide on who their mayoral candidate should be.”
And it isn’t necessarily “a done deal” that Vision will depart from efforts to find a single mayoral candidate behind that effort, according to veteran Simon Fraser University political scientist Paddy Smith.
“(Vision’s decision) certainly says nobody could agree on the left who the candidate was,” Smith said.
However, Smith added, “I’m not sure ( Vision) wants to run a candidate that will split the left.”
Longtime Vision Coun. Raymond Louie is one rumoured name to emerge as a contender; however, Louie didn’t answer Postmedia’s requests for a response Tuesday.
Burnaby South MP Kennedy Stewart has publicly said he is seriously considering a run for Vancouver mayor, characterizing it as a “dream job,” but hasn’t declared whether he would seek the vote under a party banner or as an independent.
Stewart didn’t respond to a call to his Burnaby riding office Tuesday.
One person who won’t be seeking the Vision nomination is Shauna Sylvester, since she has already decided to run for mayor as an independent even though the SFU academic has past ties to Vision as a party board member.
“I’m disappointed,” said Sylvester, because Vision had vowed that it would engage its membership before making a decision on whether to run a mayoral candidate and hasn’t done so. “It was a backroom deal and one of the reasons I’m running (as an independent). To make good on promises made about engaging citizens.”
One City spokeswoman Thi Vu said Vision’s decision hasn’t changed the party’s decision about not running a mayoral candidate, but it remains hopeful the left can “pull behind a single candidate, ideally an independent candidate.
“It would be difficult for us to see other parties supporting a mayoral candidate under Vision,” said Vu, who is on One City’s organizing committee.