Liberal star battling NDP stalwart in key riding
Former TV anchor Taggart not worried about abundance of Davies signs
The Liberals hope their candidate’s star power will be enough to wrestle the Vancouver Kingsway seat from a New Democrat powerhouse.
The NDP’s Don Davies has held Vancouver Kingsway since 2008 and got a comfortable win in 2015, with 20,763 votes to the Liberal candidate’s 12,625 and Conservative candidate’s 9,538. The NDP has won the riding in 12 of the last 18 elections, after it was formed in 1953.
But the Liberals have made clear they believe their candidate, former CTV anchor and community organizer Tamara Taggart, is their best chance at snagging the seat back on Oct. 21. Party leader Justin Trudeau said so last month when he kicked off the Liberal campaign in Vancouver Kingsway.
The Liberals won the riding in the four elections before Davies, a former lawyer, labour representative and policy adviser, became member of Parliament.
The riding is diverse, with immigrants making up just over half of its 104,870 residents, most born in China, the Philippines and Vietnam, according to the 2016 census. The median household income was $68,697 in 2015. It is bordered roughly by Main Street, Boundary Road, Grandview Highway and East 41st Avenue.
Both Davies and Taggart say they are running positive campaigns and cite housing, affordability and the environment as top concerns.
Taggart said the first thing she always hears from people is that they worry about the cost of housing, particularly for their children, followed by their worries about the cost of living and the climate.
Davies’ campaign signs far outnumber Taggart’s in the riding, but her campaign has knocked on 60,000 doors and she has met enough local Liberals to feel confident she has a good chance, she said.
“Signs don’t vote,” said Taggart, adding that “the response has been excellent at the doors and people have been happy to see me when I show up.”
Taggart said she voted for Davies twice, but no longer feels he is serving its residents’ best interest. They are ready for a new voice in Ottawa, she said.
Particularly, she wants to work nationally on the one cause she told Trudeau she “would walk through fire for”: improving the lives of people with disabilities, like her son Beckett, who has Down syndrome.
“I’m really proud of the work I’ve done in the community,” Taggart said. “When my television career ended, I knew that I didn’t want to be in TV anymore. I know how precious life is from almost dying seven years ago (she had a rare form of gastrointestinal cancer) and I knew I wanted to do something where I could make a difference, and be a game-changer.”
Davies said he believes key policies forming the NDP’s platform — universal pharmacare and dental care, affordable homes, a cap on cellphone and internet fees, student debt relief, climate action and a tax on multimillionaires — resonate with the people of Vancouver Kingsway.
Particularly close to home for Davies is dental care, which he has worked on for close to a decade and pushed to be included in the party’s national platform.
“I think people are ready for an expansion of our public health system,” Davies said. “They’re proud of it, but they know it’s not comprehensive.”
Davies has secured an endorsement from former Liberal health minister Jane Philpott, who said Davies was an effective health critic who Philpott worked with to “make pharmacare a national priority” and whose “determined efforts to address the opioid crisis helped save lives.”
Also running in Vancouver Kingsway are Helen Quan for the Conservatives, Kimball Cariou for the Communists, Donna Peterson for the Marxist–Leninists, Lawrence Taylor for the Greens and Ian Torn for the People’s Party of Canada.