Independents see chance for change
This year’s Vancouver election is already unusual with the number of high-profile mayoral candidates running independently or with nascent parties with no history of electoral success. But there’s also several high-profile council candidates choosing to eschew both new and old parties to go their own way.
A confluence of factors — including B.C.’s new campaign finance reform and few incumbents seeking re-election — have created what some have called a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” for independent candidates to change the face of a city council that hasn’t seen an independent councillor elected in three decades.
Earlier this year, Sarah Blyth, well-known for her life-saving work with the Overdose Prevention Society in the Downtown Eastside, struck out on her own as an independent council candidate, despite her past as a Vision Vancouver park board commissioner. And when the NonPartisan Association unveiled its council slate in late July, many observers were surprised at the omission of Robert McDowell, a past NPA council candidate and former diplomat.
Just days before the NPA’s announcement, its own caucus chair, Coun. George Affleck, wrote on Twitter that he was “really looking forward” to the party announcing McDowell as a council candidate. After being left off the party’s slate, McDowell announced he’d run independently. And speaking this week, McDowell said he thinks it’s for the best anyways, citing what he called the NPA’s “unfortunate mis-step” in running nine council candidates.
With the NPA choosing to run so many council candidates and risk spreading its support so thin, McDowell said, he believes he’d have a better chance running independently anyway.
“The parties are just not what they used to be,” he said.
Erin Shum, a park board commissioner elected with the NPA in 2014 before quitting the party in 2016, announced this week she’d run for council independently.
This week also saw announcements from two prominent council candidates who’d previously sought NPA council nominations before considering running with mayoral candidate Hector Bremner’s upstart Yes Vancouver party: Wade Grant, who previously served as exPremier Christy Clark’s special adviser on First Nations issues, and Adrian Crook, a housing activist and author of the blog 5 Kids 1 Condo. Grant and Crook issued separate statements confirming they’ll both run as independents this year.
Crook wrote: “Vancouverites have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity this election. For the first time in decades, we can come together to change the political culture in our city by electing independent voices.”
In Grant’s statement, he wrote that while “many people in various political parties” had asked him to run with them, he decided that “running as an independent allows me to stay true to myself.”
Crook and Grant will both receive support from Mike Wilson, who until recently was Bremner’s campaign manager. Wilson had been working closely with Bremner since the candidate’s council byelection win last year, through to the launch of their new party in July, Yes Vancouver.
But soon after they launched the party, Wilson left.
“Hector and the team there wanted to take it in a bit of a different direction, so I resigned,” Wilson said this week, declining to discuss details of that “different direction.”
Soon after he left Bremner’s team, Wilson was talking with Grant and Crook, both of whom he described as friends.
Wilson, a veteran political operative who previously worked with Clark’s B.C. Liberals, ran some numbers to assess the candidates’ chances as independents. Speaking this week, he used the same expression as Crook, calling this year a “oncein-a-lifetime opportunity” for independents.
In previous elections, voters picking the NPA mayoral candidate would be expected to vote for all or most of the NPA council candidates, and the same could be said for Vision supporters.
But this year, with a wide-open field including two independent mayoral candidates polling well (Kennedy Stewart and Shauna Sylvester), a huge number of council votes should be up for grabs.
Wilson agreed to advise both Grant and Cook on an informal basis on their council runs this year. He also has begun working in a more formal capacity with Coun. Bruce Hayne’s campaign for mayor of Surrey. He believes many voters are tired of hyper- partisanship, both provincially and municipally, and he said there’s a perception that “people are in there to do their party’s work, and not what’s right for the city.”
Eventually, once parties figure out how to operate in the new environment of campaign finance reform, Wilson expects they may eventually “re-establish themselves.”
But this year, the changes are so new, the established parties appear hamstrung.
“It could be a totally different landscape in the future,” Wilson said. If a handful of independent voices win council seats this year and “try to do what’s best for the city,” he speculated, “It could be something people love, if it works well.”