NPA’s new nominee will try to outpace foes on both sides
While the Vancouver mayor’s race has long been a two-way showdown, the number of serious candidates currently in the running is making October’s election look like a horse race — one with long shots, favourites and wagers being made across the city.
And just like at Hastings Park, it will only get more interesting as the runners near the finish line.
For decades now, Vancouver’s mayoral elections have boiled down to a head-to-head race between the Non-Partisan Association, the centre-right party that has dominated local politics for most of its 81-year history, and a left-leaning opponent: more recently, Vision Vancouver, and before that, COPE.
But this year’s field is shaping up to be much more crowded.
Some clarity came to the NPA side of the ballot Sunday night, with Ken Sim sealing up the party ’s mayoral nomination. But even if a couple of current candidate names are scratched between now and October — which seems likely — Sim will still face a bigger field of viable opponents than his predecessors.
While five groups on the left of Vancouver’s political landscape are co-ordinating a slate of candidates for council, park and school boards, those self-described “progressive” parties have yet to unify behind a single mayoral candidate. At least three candidates are vying for their endorsements: Ian Campbell, apparently set to be acclaimed as Vision Vancouver’s mayoral candidate, and a pair of high-profile independents, Shauna Sylvester and Kennedy Stewart.
And while the left side of the track looks crowded, Sim and the NPA will also face tough opposition on their right flank, from a pair of erstwhile NPA mayoral hopefuls-turned-opponents.
Immediately after the announcement of Sim’s nomination Sunday night, two statements were issued: one from Wai Young, the former federal Conservative MP for Vancouver South, and another from sitting NPA Coun. Hector Bremner.
The opening line of each statement congratulated Sim on securing the NPA nomination, before telling Vancouver voters they can do better than the NPA this October.
Minutes earlier, Bremner issued his own statement, saying: “Sim has won a poisoned chalice. This is now no longer the NPA as most people know it.”
Bremner, a rookie NPA councillor whose bid for the party’s mayoral nomination was rejected last month by the party’s board, recently announced his plans to run for mayor with his own upstart party.
Though the new party isn’t expected to officially launch for a couple of weeks, the group took its next steps Monday night with an informal gathering at a Gastown pub, to which Bremner invited “disenfranchised” NPA members and anyone else.
Bremner said Monday’s guest list included three candidates previously seeking NPA council nominations: Adrian Crook, Wade Grant and Scott de Lange Boom.
Those three may run for council spots with Bremner’s new party, along with a slate of park and school board candidates.
When asked if Sim — a freshfaced, socially progressive candidate with an impressive business background — represents a tougher opponent than the alternatives, Bremner said: “I don’t think there’s necessarily a tougher opponent. I think nothing changes. There was no outcome other than an incrementalist platform from the NPA that doesn’t really see the housing crisis as a serious issue or at least will only pay it lip service.”
Young attended the NPA’s annual general meeting last November, she said, and started signing up members in anticipation of a possible run for the party’s mayoral nomination. Earlier this year she picked up an NPA mayoral application package, but then set off with her own new party called Coalition Vancouver. The party launched a website, but Young hadn’t said much publicly since then and details remained scarce. But in a recent conversation with The Sun, Young revealed a few new details.
“We were going to launch a lot earlier, but then it seemed like every week there was somebody else popping out of the cake,” Young said late last week. “So we just thought this is a little bit crazy, we’ll just let it settle down.”
Following Sim’s nomination Sunday, Coalition Vancouver issued a news release calling for an end to the era of Vision and the NPA, which the statement called “Vision Lite.”
Young, too, plans to run a full slate of candidates under the Coalition Vancouver banner, she said, with an official launch expected “soon.”
Asked why she decided not to run for the NPA, Young said: “We looked at what the NPA had to offer and it wasn’t where we wanted to go, and we didn’t feel like we had our values and principles aligned.”
Asked if Coalition Vancouver might be more politically aligned with Young’s background with the traditionally right-wing federal Conservative Party of Canada, she replied: “Coalition Vancouver is not right or left. All of these fancy terms are well and good, but is it going to fix the pothole at the end of your street? Our party is going to be responsive to civic needs.”
And they’re off.