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Who is the campaign manager for the transit referendum Yes side?

That is an excellent question and one that many people are asking themselves, including those on the Yes side.

It appears to be a many-headed beast.

The overall campaign manager for the Yes side coalition, as opposed to the mayors’ council, brought in recently, is Marko Dekovic, I’m told. And that seems to be right, since I’ve been getting news releases with his name on them the last few days. Dekovic, if you don’t know, was once a Non-Partisan Association board member (the city’s civic party, remember them) which is where I first met him. He also worked on Premier Christy Clark’s campaign in the later days. And he is currently employed by Port Metro Vancouver. (All of that suggests to me the feds are interested in this whole effort.)

The campaign manager for the mayors’ council is Marcella Munro, who has run a couple of Vision Vancouver campaigns and been on their board.

AMENDED MARCH 19: I presumed, since Marcella has been sending out the news releases and was the main contact, that she was the campaign manager. Since then, I’ve been told that she is not, though she has been the point person on communications the last while. This is what I’ve been about who is the campaign manager. I contacted Mike Buda, the executive director for the mayors’ council, and he said the chiefs of staffs for the two mayors at the head of the council are the campaign co-managers. So that’s Mike Magee in Gregor Robertson’s office and George Psefteas in Linda Hepner’s office. But then someone else emailed and said the real campaign manager for the mayors’ council is Bob Ransford at Counterpoint. I checked with Bob and he said, yes, he is. So now that’s all clear.

The campaign manager for the union effort in all of this is Bill Tieleman, who does a lot of work with unions and was a co-leader of the anti-HST movement.

The campaign manager for the business effort in all of this is Bruce Rozenhart, with Counterpoint Communications. His bio is here. Those in the know will tell you that this is company of Bob Ransford, who has been a prominent Vision Vancouver booster.

The campaign mangers for the environmental side are Theresa Beer and Ian Bruce.

Along with those people, I get emails from various groups organizing what appear to be mostly pro-Yes events and talks: students, Eric Doherty on behalf of Metro Vancouver Alliance, the coalition of faith/union/non-profit/etc, and also of HandyDart riders.

It seemed to me at one point that Judy Kirk, who had done community engagement stuff for a lot of big clients in the province, was also involved, along with her colleague Mike McDonald, formerly of the premier’s campaign. They seemed to be attending the big early meetings and doing some comms for the mayors’ council. But I haven’t heard much from Kirk and Co for a couple of months now.