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Municipal Politics

Vision’s Self-Destruction Leaves Stewart with a Council Challenge

Vancouver’s election made history — for better or worse.

Allen Garr 22 Oct 2018TheTyee.ca

Allen Garr is a veteran Vancouver reporter and columnist who’s worked for major print and broadcast outlets in Canada.

It is a Vancouver civic election that made history. A record number of women – eight from four different parties — were elected to council. No one of Chinese descent made the council grade. And Vision, the party that held power for a decade, was practically obliterated.

It was well past midnight and long after other municipal electoral races in British Columbia had been put to bed when we had the final results.

It was a beaming independent mayoral candidate, Kennedy Stewart, who took to the podium in the basement of that East Vancouver hipster hangout, The Waldorf.

As the thumping music was turned down and many in the boisterous crowd pumped their fists in the air and chanted his name, others raised their iPhones and strained to get a better shot of Vancouver’s next mayor.

Then Stewart opened with this: “Was that close enough for you or what?”

Stewart had been ahead of his chief rival, the Non-Partisan Association’s Ken Sim, except for one small burp early in the returns. But the lead accordioned through the evening and nothing was conceded or confirmed until the final poll, number 133, was recorded. Stewart was ahead by 984 votes, with 28.7-per-cent support compared to Sim’s 28.2 per cent.

In fact, there hasn’t been a race for mayor this close in living memory. If Sim had picked up just eight more votes from each of those 133 polls he would have won. But close, as they say, only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.

As the high number of undecided voters — 34 per cent, according to a recent poll — made their decisions the race tightened in the last few days.

Both Sim and Kennedy were plagued by splits on their sides of the political spectrum.

Sim lost support to Hector “The Defector” Bremner, the NPA councillor who jumped ship when he was refused a nomination by that party and formed one of his own. He took 5.7 per cent of the vote. Wai Young, the former Tory MP, captured 6.9 per cent of votes on Sim’s right flank. Together they captured the 40 per cent of the vote that has traditionally gone to the NPA.

Kennedy’s ongoing headache was Shauna Sylvester. She came third behind Sim, capturing 20.5 per cent of the vote, after spending much of the final days of the campaign attacking Stewart. She ultimately accumulated support from federal Liberals, most notably Liberal MP Joyce Murray, along with disgruntled ex-NDP supporters, including enviro-icon David Suzuki. (Expect Sylvester to seek a federal Liberal nomination next.)

When it came to council, the NPA actually improved. It now has five (all women) of the 10 council seats.

So Kennedy is left to stitch together a majority with the three Green councillors, one from OneCity and one from COPE, which is not necessarily a harmonious crowd. That means he will occasionally need NPA support.

The main election issue was housing affordability, and almost every candidate cited it as a priority.

But a ballot that made history with 158 names and a record number of independents — with only one, Kennedy Stewart, getting elected — may have caused the drop in voter turnout. It was about 40 per cent, below the previous election at 44 per cent.

Through all of this there was the stumbling, bumbling end of Vision, a historic collapse.

First Vision wasn’t going to run a mayor, and would support an independent.

Then the party changed its mind and recruited Taleeb Noormohamed, who bailed out because of a “cardiac event.”

That left them with First Nations leader Ian Campbell, who was pushed out over an undisclosed criminal charge that was stayed.

Then Vision councillor Andrea Reimer decided not to replace Campbell, preferring to go to Harvard.

Then, on the day before the election, Vision booted out Wei Qiao Zhang, one of its five council candidates. There was no clear explanation.

Vision elected one person, barely, as Allan Wong squeezed into the last spot on school board.

But why worry about the past when the present is moving so quickly into the future and there is the affordable housing crisis, an opioid crisis and a climate change crisis to deal with — and a new mayor and council to break in.  [Tyee]

Read more: Municipal Politics

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