Vision Vancouver mum on plans for mayoral candidate
Party’s deadline for nominations comes with few hints as to who may run
On its deadline day for accepting nominations, there were scant details from Vision Vancouver or anyone else about who might run for mayor under its banner.
Applications have been received and any further ones were being accepted by the party until one minute before midnight on Friday, confirmed Coree Tull, co-chair of Vision’s nominations committee.
There’s keen interest because after dominating city politics for a decade, Vision doesn’t yet have a firm, public commitment by a candidate to run on its behalf.
At the same time, any Visionbacked candidate for mayor could hamper efforts by the city’s civic parties to “unite the left” and avoid splitting votes that would help rival Non Partisan Association candidates.
A day earlier, asked whether the announcement about Vision’s mayoral nomination meeting to be held in late June meant the party had decided to definitely run a mayoral candidate in October, cochair Michael Haack did not reply yes or no, but sent an emailed answer saying:
“We remain focused on our own nomination process for mayor, council, park and school board. We’ll leave it to our members to decide on who their mayoral candidate should be.”
Shauna Sylvester, the Simon Fraser University academic who has past ties to Vision as a party board member, but has decided to run for mayor as an independent, said in an email she has “also been waiting to see what Vision was going to do.”
“I was disappointed that they stepped away from their commitment to engage their members in the decision about whether or not they were going to run a mayoral candidate or support an independent candidate.
“I think one of the concerns people I’ve met with have expressed is that they don’t feel like the processes of consultation within the city are genuine,” Sylvester said.
On Thursday morning, Burnaby South MP Kennedy Stewart ended rife speculation he might seek a Vision mayoral nomination by announcing he, too, would instead be running as an independent candidate for Vancouver mayor.
There were media reports late Thursday, after Stewart’s announcement, that Squamish hereditary Chief Ian Campbell is considering seeking the Vision nomination for mayor, but no further details were available Friday from Campbell, who did not return calls or emails.
Longtime Vision Coun. Raymond Louie is another possible contender, but he also did not return calls or emails from Postmedia on Friday. jlee-young@postmedia.com With files from Dan Fumano