TWITTER POST LEAKS CHERNEN’S RUN FOR COUNCIL
Glen Chernen has been described, by both his supporters and his detractors, as an unorthodox candidate. And now, the latest step in his unlikely political journey has been unveiled in a decidedly unusual way.
Since failing to win the Non-Partisan Association’s mayoral nomination in June, Chernen hasn’t publicly said what, if anything, he’ll do for this October’s civic election. But on Saturday evening, his new plan to run for council with the upstart Coalition Vancouver party was unveiled, somewhat accidentally, via social media, by the person handling the party’s social media.
The announcement, which misspelled the candidate’s surname, was posted to Twitter at 6:18 p.m. on Saturday by Gary Bizzo, who wrote: “Exciting news: Glen Chernin joins #CoalitionVancouver as a council candidate!”
Bizzo, described as “one of the top social-media influencers in Canada” on his website garybizzo.com, said he’s volunteering to support Wai Young ’s mayoral bid by running her social media. When asked Monday about his Chernen announcement, Bizzo said: “I may have jumped the gun. I took it from an internal document which I thought was public, and after I sent it out, I realized it might not have been meant for public consumption.”
Young, Coalition Vancouver’s leader and mayoral candidate, confirmed Monday the news was true.
“Our press release is actually going out (today),” said Young, a former Conservative MP. “It’s really exciting, we’re thrilled that Glen is joining us.”
While seeking the NPA nomination, Chernen told that party’s members he was the person most qualified to run Vancouver, and “the only candidate who can hit the ground running.” His detractors, however, have pointed to his lack of political or professional experience; he has never held elected office and, by his own description, has not had a job in the last 20 years. Instead, he’s spent his time in recent years managing his personal investments and investigating the City of Vancouver’s finances and real estate transactions. He made headlines for trying to take local politicians to court, but some of those lawsuits were thrown out and described by judges as “without merit” and an “abuse of process.”
Bizzo has a significant reach on Twitter, where he has 467,000 followers, more than twice as many as the official account for the City of Vancouver.
“I’m what you call a global influencer for social media,” said Bizzo, whose book Social Media Rockstar sells for $24 on Amazon.
Bizzo expressed Monday morning that he may get into trouble for letting the cat out of the bag, but, as of late Monday afternoon, he hadn’t deleted the tweet and it remained online. (At that time, the tweet had zero retweets and the only account that had “liked” it was listed as being based in Argentina).
Bizzo’s tweet described Chernen as a “strong advocate for increased transparency and accountability at city hall.”
Chernen didn’t reply to email and phone messages Monday. An auto-reply email said he’s on vacation this week, but he’s also been fairly quiet since his unsuccessful run at the NPA mayoral nomination and didn’t return emails and phone messages in May and June.
Bizzo said: “To be honest, I’m not really big as far as the politics side of it. I live in Burnaby.”
Asked why he was getting involved with the Vancouver mayoral race when he lives in Burnaby, Bizzo said: “It affects everybody, doesn’t it? I have offices downtown and this bikelane stuff is driving me crazy.”
Indeed, Young has made bike lanes a central piece of her platform, promising to remove some of them, including the newly opened one near Vancouver General Hospital.
It’s one issue where she seems to be on the same page as Chernen, who criticized the VGH bike lanes on his own Twitter account in April, writing: “It would be an easy decision to sort it out with some heavy equipment as soon as I become mayor.”
But while critics of Vancouver’s bike lanes might be vocal, it’s not clear exactly how many votes they represent — indeed, some of them, like Bizzo, live in neighbouring suburbs and can’t vote in Vancouver. And while bike lanes were strongly associated with current Mayor Gregor Robertson and his Vision Vancouver party and they drew criticism (some of it fierce) for their handling of the issue, Robertson won re-election and Vision won a majority on council in both of the last two elections.
So while those results raise the question of whether it will be a winning proposition for Young and Chernen to campaign against bike lanes, this election is different.
With such a wide-open field and long list of candidates vying for the mayor’s job, the vote is expected to be so fractured that the winner could, hypothetically, pull off a victory with a historically small share of the overall vote.
Young and Chernen will hope they can convince enough people to drive down to their local voting station on Oct. 20 to create the very first Coalition Vancouver government.