BREMNER TO LAUNCH NEW POLITICAL PARTY
Decision comes two weeks after rejection of his bid to run for mayoral nomination
When Rob Macdonald paused in response to a question Wednesday afternoon, and for a moment said nothing, it said something about this bizarre political moment in Vancouver.
Minutes earlier, a public announcement had been made by Hector Bremner, a sitting councillor for the Non-Partisan Association, the 80-year-old civic party that Macdonald has backed his whole life, through staunch public support, countless hours of work in various roles, as well as his chequebook; in 2011 alone, Macdonald famously donated $960,000 to the NPA.
Bremner and his team are looking to launch a new civic party to run against the NPA in this year’s municipal election, the councillor announced in a statement Wednesday, publicly confirming an idea discussed in local political circles for the last two weeks, ever since Bremner’s own party rejected his bid to run for their mayoral nomination.
Few details or names were available Wednesday from Bremner’s team about the upstart party, but people with knowledge of their plans said they expect to eventually run candidates for council, school board, and park board, along with Bremner seeking the mayoralty.
Three candidates now seek the NPA mayoral nomination, to be decided at a party meeting June 3: NPA park board commissioner John Coupar, business owner Ken Sim, and Glen Chernen, a vocal critic of the Vancouver government’s real estate dealings.
Macdonald, a real estate developer and former NPA vicepresident, said he understands Chernen wants to slow development “way, way back to the point of maybe halting it.”
On the other hand, Bremner has loudly called for more housing and density in Vancouver neighbourhoods, ever since he was first elected to public office, as the NPA council candidate in last October’s byelection.
Asked if Bremner’s pro-density views may have made him an awkward fit for the current NPA, Macdonald said: “Well, that’s the obvious thing, because he and Mr. Chernen seem to be at opposite ends of the spectrum. Hector’s pro, pro, pro-density, and Chernen’s less, less, less density.”
Macdonald is endorsing Coupar for the NPA nomination, he said, but he also believes Sim is a “superb guy as well,” and he hopes there’s a future in the party for both of them.
But, Macdonald said Wednesday, he doesn’t really know Chernen.
Other longtime NPA members have raised concerns about Chernen’s candidacy, and Chernen himself has acknowledged he’s fighting to overcome opposition from the party’s old guard.
Macdonald didn’t express concerns about Chernen Wednesday. But when asked if he may, in October, end up voting against the party he’s supported his whole life, he paused.
If Chernen ends up as the NPA’s mayoral candidate in this year’s election, running against Bremner with his new party, could Macdonald find himself casting a ballot for Bremner?
“That is a good question,” Macdonald said, twice, after a moment. “That could be a possibility. I just don’t know Chernen well enough.”
That’s how strange Vancouver’s political landscape is right now.
Still, Macdonald wasn’t sure he agreed with Bremner’s idea to go his own way.
“My own preference would be that he stay in the NPA,” Macdonald said. “The NPA needs young people like Hector Bremner, so I would like it if he would stay within that tent. But in any event, hopefully he’ll get to where he wants to go on his own, but it’s going to be tough I think. It’s quite difficult to build your own party from scratch.”
Bremner agreed Wednesday it would be a lot of work to get a new party off the ground.
But his vision for it, as he described in an interview minutes after the announcement, is not modest.
“If we launch something, I can tell you this: it will be the largest political party in Vancouver, right out of the gate,” Bremner said. “It’s going to be quite historic.”
While the NPA has traditionally been Vancouver’s centreright party, Bremner declined Wednesday to assign such a label on his new entity, stressing key principles like “fiscal responsibility, environmental protection and social progress.”
Bremner said he’s signed up thousands of new members for the NPA since he started running for last year’s byelection. His new party, however, will target not only the members he brought into the NPA; any “disenfranchised” NPA members will be offered free membership in the new entity, Wednesday’s statement said.
In the days before Wednesday’s announcement, one longtime political insider compared Bremner’s then-rumoured plan with the establishment of Vision Vancouver in 2005, when the upstart party broke off from the city’s longest-running leftleaning elector organization, the Coalition of Progressive Electors.
Since 2008, Vision has dominated Vancouver’s political scene, winning a total of 20 council seats and all three mayor’s terms, compared with COPE, largely relegated to the political wilderness, winning a total of two council seats during that time.
Mike Wilson, Bremner’s campaign manager, told Postmedia that out of respect for the NPA’s process, nothing would happen on their end until after the NPA’s June 3 nomination meeting.
Bremner said he’ll discuss the future of his role in the NPA caucus with his colleagues there in the coming days.
Of the strange turn of events, Bremner said: “You couldn’t write this.”
Indeed.