The track is, by horseracing standards, muddy and favouring the front-runner.
The forecast is, by meteorological standards, changeable.
Vancouver is in the final year of the race for municipal office with a cluster of candidates who clearly dislike the mayor but are stumbling over each other to topple him.
Few can assert that Kennedy Stewart has performed well. The pandemic provided the city a miserable mayoralty of minuscule ministering. As other leaders stepped up, he stepped back, except to emerge occasionally from invisibility, mostly notably when he adopted the Chicken Little role in predicting certain civic economic collapse. Months later, Vancouver’s books showed a surplus.
But with each competent person who decides to challenge him, his chances of re-election improve.
At the deadline of this column, but seemingly subject to change the second the Send button is pressed, there are three existing, three reconstituted and one new party vying for council, with three and possibly four of them – indeed, maybe more – nominating mayoralty candidates. Egos being what they are, that number will not diminish and is more likely to grow.
The betting line is that Stewart’s opponents will split votes that ensure the incumbent mayor retains his role, unless they can convincingly present a more common-sensical yet progressive plan.
There is atypical activity already one year from the vote.
Ken Sim, who in 2018 ran a close second as the mayoralty candidate for the Non-Partisan Association (NPA), then ran away from the party, is running for A Better City (ABC), a party he started and until recently oddly demurred when asked if he would be its mayoralty pick. He’s always been in. The party wouldn’t exist without him. He is the business candidate.
Colleen Hardwick, the city councillor who also ran for and then from the NPA (and created the ABC brand Sim now has cribbed), is reviving The Electors Action Movement (TEAM), now known as TEAM for a Liveable Vancouver. It met last week to build a policy platform proposal it will put to its inaugural general meeting by the end of November. It intends a slate of six to occupy a majority of the 11 positions (mayor included) on council, to be selected early in 2022. All six may be for council itself, but if the party runs a mayoralty candidate, Hardwick will be it. The party wouldn’t exist without her. She is the policy candidate.
Mark Marissen, the backroom architect in 2018 of the Yes Vancouver party as a mayoralty vehicle for excommunicated NPA councillor Hector Bremner, now has decided to step forward for the top job himself and is rebranding Yes Vancouver as Progress Vancouver. Nominations of candidates are forthcoming, and Marissen hopes he can demonstrate he is a plausible progressive alternative to the mayor. He is the provocative candidate.
John Coupar, who hasn’t left the NPA, has no such complications of nomination. One morning last April, we awakened – along with elected NPA councillors, park board commissioners and trustees – to learn the venerable party (full disclosure: I was its 2014 mayoralty candidate) had anointed Coupar, even though at least three other NPA members wanted to contest the nomination. He is the traditional candidate.
The NPA had elected five councillors in 2018, one (Rebecca Bligh) left over the election of its board, and three of the remaining four (Hardwick, Sarah Kirby Yung and Lisa Dominato) correctly gagged over the board’s arbitrary and surprise move. They have moved on. Only Melissa de Genova stayed put.
The NPA snatched defeat from the jaws of victory this term. Had the councillors worked as a combo and co-opted one other, they would have run the city for the last three years. Rather than play like a hockey team, they chose to play like tennis singles and couldn’t seemingly agree on anything. It is a long way now from the close contact with power it had within its grasp. Their failure to coalesce has been the largest gift this term to the mayor and the rest of council to pursue an agenda clearly focused on pursuits more appropriate to federal and provincial politicians.
Vision Vancouver, in rule for a decade, vanquished in 2018, in some sort of reincarnation, is suggesting it will run candidates. The Greens have three councillors, but there is no word yet if they will directly compete with Stewart, who has been a kind uncle figure to them, to OneCity’s Christine Boyle and COPE’s Jean Swanson. I suspect they don’t want to rock that boat.
If Stewart is reading all this, he is experiencing a combination of lowered blood pressure and raised beer glass. Of course, this may be a matter of hubris.
There remains the important endorsement of the Vancouver and District Labour Council. Stewart rode to victory with it in 2018. In my meagre experience, the labour backing is a major municipal factor here. It has already said it will not help rejuvenate Vision, which is in itself quite the statement given its history of support, but it hasn’t placed its faith formally in the incumbent.
If Stewart should fear anything beyond losing the labour endorsement, it’s someone with much the same agenda to split his base. The 2018 race included a strong left-of-centre candidate, Shauna Sylvester, who took a good chunk of the progressive vote. That nearly played into the hands of the NPA last time (Sim lost by fewer than 1,000 votes) and would make any of Stewart’s current rival candidates more credible contenders again this time.
As long as his opponents are truly opponents and not the same breed with a solid jockey, he is the front-runner unlikely to fade down the home stretch. If that bothers you, I can identify three or four people to complain to. •
Kirk LaPointe is publisher and editor-in-chief of BIV and vice-president, editorial, of Glacier Media.
