‘Weird’ election races a festival of uncertainty
As election campaigns kick off across British Columbia, its largest city is facing a race unlike any other, experts say.
A proliferation of new parties and independent candidates is crowding the Vancouver race in a widespread turnover of the existing council.
“It’s really weird, it’s not common to anything I’ve ever seen,” said David Moscrop, a political scientist in the department of communications at the University of Ottawa who recently left B.C.
The city’s political system is unusual in Canada.
It operates under a party system and voters elect council members at-large because Vancouver hasn’t had wards since the 1930s.
Since 2008, centre-left Vision Vancouver has dominated council under Mayor Gregor Robertson, who is not running again.
This year, newcomers who considered throwing their names in the hat are looking at a rare opportunity. Only four incumbent councillors are running and among them, only one is returning from Vision Vancouver.
The party also saw its mayoral candidate, Ian Campbell, bow out just one week before the nomination deadline.
The result leaves voters in the city of Vancouver to choose between 21 mayoral and 71 council candidates vying for the mayor’s job and 10 council seats. Eleven parties are running candidates.
Hamish Telford, a political scientist at the University of the Fraser Valley, said new campaign finance rules are likely part of the reason so many new parties and candidates entered the race. They prohibit corporate and union donations and limit individual contributions to $1,200.
Under the old system, he said candidates with name recognition or established political parties tended to soak up available donations.
The turnover extends beyond the city. Only eight of the 21 mayors in the municipalities that make up Metro Vancouver are running again.
Patrick Smith, a political science and urban systems professor at Simon Fraser University, said it’s not clear why so many incumbents in the region have declined another run. But it could have something to do with the new campaign spending rules and the extension of municipal terms to four years from three.
While the shift in campaign spending was heralded as a way to get ‘big money’ out of politics, Smith said it could have the unintended consequence of lowering voter turnout. This race may also be less predictable than others, with the introduction of so many new parties and the low number of incumbents running.
Former NDP MP Kennedy Stewart is considered among the front-runners for the mayor’s seat in Vancouver. If he is elected, he would be the first independent mayor since Mike Harcourt in 1980.