(I don’t think attracting crowds was the strategy, by the way. This initiative comes largely from a couple of guys, former TEAM member Bill McCreery being the leader, who haven’t been active in the party before. In fact, I’ve heard members grumbling that these newcomers were sucking up energy the party didn’t need to waste on their efforts to turn the NPA into TEAM or some facsimile thereof.)

There were a few passionate speeches. McCreery noted that 76 per cent of people who voted in the online survey showed a preference for choices other than Non Partisan Association. Among other choices: Vancouver First, Vancouver Citizens’ Alliance, New Progressive Alliance, One Vancouver, New Progressive Association, and New Positive Action. Former NPA park commission Diane Ledingham supported him, saying that a new name would mean “the NPA can evolve into something new. Vancouver has changed rapidly and this would allow us to move forward into a new name that speaks more of inclusivity.”

On the other side, one-time aldermanic candidate (Class of ’82) Paul McCrea said that he was around after the NPA was whomped by the Mike Harcourt-led group in 1981 and everyone fretted back then that they should change the name. The party “went on to three sweeping victories” after that, he reminded everyone. As well, as someone who’s worked in advertising, he also pointed out that “it takes a lot of money and a lot of time to impress a brand name as well known as this one.”

Charles Flavelle of Purdy’s Chocolates said that, if his company had fallen on hard times, “I would have changed the direction, not the name.”

And Councillor Suzanne Anton, in a campaign-style speech, listed everything wrong with the current Vision administration (park board doesn’t actually even believe in independent park boards; school board has no faith in the school system; city council has politicized city hall and is spending its time fighting another order of government. She wrapped up with a stirring “It is important that we rebrand our image but we do not need to rebrand our name.”

The party broke up while it was still light out. I didn’t see whether any attendees drifted over to the Moira Stillwell party going on in another part of the building. But I doubt it, as NPA people keep telling me that only Vision and COPE work in suspicious lockstep with the provincial NDP.

And now, on to the election. I didn’t note it in a previous post, but the NPA are planning to nominate a first round of candidates in November, a year before the 2011 election, presumably to get some strength on the ground that is hard for them to maintain now, with only one city councillor, two school trustees, and one park-board commissioner

I’ll skip the boring parts (“two parties with exciting and diverse slates of candidates are set to do battle”) and go directly to the real news.

First off, the Nude Garden Party has returned to the scene.

As expected, Marc Emery is back to collect the mayoral votes of disgruntled marijuana fans who can remember where the polls are and what day to vote. Environmental firebrand Betty Krawcyzk is also running for mayor as promised, along with perennial election hopeful and persistent emailer Golok Buday.

I see that Jamie Lee Hamilton has decided to run as an independent for park board after having been turned down by the Non-Partisan Association for what she claimed was their discrimination against transgendered people and sex-trade workers. She’ll be joined by another candidate rejected by his party, Thomas Lockhart. Lockhart got the lowest number of votes in the crowded and competitive race among the Vision Vancouver candidates for park board, but he hasn’t yet claimed that party members discriminated against tattoo artists. They will also be joined by Lorne Mayencourt’s brother, Richard.

The race has also brought out some people with causes. Audrey Jane Laferriere, the Downtown Eastside resident who has been on a one-woman campaign to have the empty Storyeum turned into a homeless shelter, is running for council. Olympics critic Chris Shaw is running with the Work Less Party.

Finally, I see that the NPA were unable to find a final school-board candidate to fill out the roster of nine. Two more were announced at last week’s NPA dinner, former SFU continuing-ed director Margit Nance and former long-time teacher Eileen Le Gallais. There were rumours around they were trying to recruit Catherine Evans, but either that wasn’t true and it was and they were unsuccessful.

It was slightly tougher for candidates to go through the nomination hoops this time, as the city now has a requirement that 25 people have to sign your nomination papers instead of the previous two. It must have been causing some distress because at least four candidates asked me to sign theirs, which I unfortunately had to decline so as to preserve my reputation as Objective Snarky Person. However, I see the new requirement didn’t stop previous determined loners like Wendythirteen and Steve Wansleeben.

Ladies and gentlemen: Your candidates

City of Vancouver News Release
October 10, 2008

86 candidates file for City election

Nominations closed at 4 pm today for positions on the November 15, 2008 ballot for the general local election in Vancouver. A total of 86 candidates filed nomination papers by the deadline (compared with 96 candidates who ran in Vancouver’s 2005 municipal election).

On Election Day, Vancouver residents will be asked to elect one Mayor, 10 Councillors, seven Park Board Commissioners and nine School Trustees for a three-year term (December 2008 to December 2011), and to vote on 3 borrowing questions.

Below is the unofficial list of candidates from Vancouver’s Chief Election Officer. From now until 4 pm on October 14, 2008, candidates may withdraw their nomination, have their endorsement by the elector organization withdrawn, or have their nomination challenged.

15 Candidates for Mayor
(1 to be elected)

BRITTEN, Patrick C. (Nude Garden Party)
BUDAY, Gölök Z.
CAISSY, Menard D.
EMERY, Marc
HANSEN, Mike
HATOUM, Joe
JIMENEZ, Angel L.
KAPLAN, Leon
KRAWCZYK, Betty (Work Less Party)
KUAH, Jeff
LADNER, Peter (NPA)
MAXWELL N BUR, R. H.
RITCHIE, Bill
ROBERTSON, Gregor (Vision Vancouver)
YEE, Scott

32 Candidates for Councillor
(10 to be elected)

ANTON, Suzanne (NPA)
BALL, Elizabeth (NPA)
BICKERTON, Sean (NPA)
BOYCHUK, John T.
BOYER, Marc
CADMAN, David (COPE)
CAPRI, Kim (NPA)
CHOW, George (Vision Vancouver)
COPELAND, Leanore (NPA)
DEAL, Heather (Vision Vancouver)
DHALIWAL, Kashmir (Vision Vancouver)
GELLER, Michael (NPA)
GREGSON, Ian (Work Less Party)
HOUGHTON, Korina (NPA)
JANG, Kerry (Vision Vancouver)
JOHNSON, Lea
KADIOGLU, Matt
LAFERRIERE, Audrey Jane
LEE, David (NPA)
LOUIE, Raymond P. (Vision Vancouver)
MEGGS, Geoff (Vision Vancouver)
ORACLE, Bud
REIMER, Andrea (Vision Vancouver)
SHAW, Chris (Work Less Party)
SIDHU, Daljit S. (NPA)
STEVENSON, Tim (Vision Vancouver)
TRAMUTOLA, Geri (Work Less Party)
WANSLEEBEN, Steve
WENDYTHIRTEEN
WISDOM, Timothy (Work Less Party)
WONG, Kanman (NPA)
WOODSWORTH, Ellen (COPE)

20 Candidates for Park Commissioner
(7 to be elected)

ANDALIS, Juliet Victoria
BARNES, Constance (Vision Vancouver)
BLYTH, Sarah (Vision Vancouver)
DE GENOVA, Melissa (NPA)
DOUMENC, Ivan (Work Less Party)
HAMILTON, Jamie Lee
HASKELL, Peter Raymond
HUNDAL, Raj (Vision Vancouver)
JASPER, Aaron (Vision Vancouver)
LOCKHART, Thomas
MACKINNON, Stuart (Green Party of Vancouver)
MAYENCOURT, Richard
MCDIARMID, Laura (NPA)
RICHARDSON, Christopher (NPA)
ROBERTSON, Ian (NPA)
ROMANIUK, Anita (COPE)
SHUKLA, Naresh (NPA )
URTON, Sharon (NPA)
WOODCOCK, Loretta (COPE)
ZLOTNIK, Marty (NPA)

19 Candidates for School Trustee
(9 to be elected)

BACCHUS, Patti (Vision Vancouver)
BARGEMAN, Bill (COPE)
BLAKEY, Al (COPE)
BOUEY, Jane (COPE)
CLEMENT, Ken (Vision Vancouver)
DENIKE, Ken (NPA)
GIBSON, Carol (NPA)
GREGSON, Sharon E. (Vision Vancouver)
HANSEN, Clarence (NPA)
HASKELL, Peter Raymond
HOLDEN, Heather (NPA)
LE GALLAIS, Eileen (NPA)
LOMBARDI, Mike (Vision Vancouver)
NANCE, Margit (NPA)
SINGH, Alvin (COPE)
SINGH, Lakhbir (NPA)
STARK, Robert Allan
WONG, Allan (COPE)
WOO, Sophia (NPA)

List of Elector Organizations:

COPE (Coalition of Progressive Electors)
Green Party of Vancouver
NPA (Non-Partisan Association)
Nude Garden Party
Vision Vancouver
Work Less Party

This list, along with nomination documents, candidate profiles and contact information for the candidates, is on the City’s website at vancouver.ca/vote.

Due to a legislative change in 2008, the City is no longer required to black out personal information in nomination documents that are posted on the website.

But Louis had clearly put a lot of work into organizing voters. Noticeable among them was a group of Indo-Canadian men at the back of the room, which provoked some muttering among the anybody-but-Tim crowd in the room about their sudden group appearance. (I’m looking forward to the day when I cover a political story in Vancouver when people from the ethnic communities complain to me about how all these white people keep showing up at the meetings in their fleets of Volvos.)

The men, who told me they worked in trucking, not the taxi industry as the whisperers assumed, said they came out to support Tim because he had always been a good councillor for them, someone who was always ready to take their calls and respond to their questions.

“He listened to our voice,” said Gary Grewal.

With the support of people like that, along with others like Lenore Clemens, who also thought he was just a good, hard-working councillor when in office, Louis got 157 votes, compared to David Cadman’s 161 in the first round. That produced a fair amount of consternation in the room, friends. Most people were reluctant to talk publicly about how much of a disaster they thought it would be, except for reliable Phil Rankin, who always calls it as he sees it.

“It would be unworkable,” said Rankin, as people were waiting for the results of the second ballot. Rankin is one of many who has a lot of doubts about Vision Vancouver and what it really is. (“I don’t think it has the ability to be a civic party of the left. It’s a centrist party. It’s not NDP.”) But, as he said, “we’re in survival mode right now.” And having Louis running as part of a coalition that he was publicly railing against until recently would be a hopeless proposition. And he doubted that Louis could moderate his position. “He’s inflexible.”

While some people were freaking out at the thought of a Louis win, others in the crowd were more phlegmatic. As a couple pointed out to me, Louis had topped out at 157 votes. The first candidate to drop off was Terry Martin and presumably everyone supporting him had already voted for Louis, so he wasn’t going to get any more there. And people who were supporting Cadman, Ellen Woodsworth or Meena Wong were unlikely to switch from an “accommodation” candidate to someone who has always made it plain that he thinks Vision is a sell-out, traitor party.

So the second-ballot results were a relief to the worriers, since it clearly showed that the votes were shifting away from Meena Wong towards David and Ellen. The second round, with 302 ballots cast, produced 211 for David, 141 for Tim, 136 for Ellen and 98 for Meena.

But voters were leaving the room all the time, with the question still open as to whose supporters were hanging around. Just before 6, the answer came — a very few more of Ellen’s than Tim’s. She got 137 votes, he got 131. There was an immediate majority-approved motion to destroy the ballots, quickly taken while a few Tim supporters were yelling “Recount.”

The results came as a huge relief to the pragmatists who see this election as one where COPE is just going to tread water and hang on for the next three years, waiting to see whether Vision succeeds or implodes. If it implodes, well, the Copesters will be there to pick up the pieces as they did after TEAM fell apart. That’s the way they see it.

By the way, for those who care, Loretta Woodcock and Anita Romaniuk are the park-board candidates. There was no vote because John Irwin dropped off, something about having twins in the spring. Gee, why would that stop anyone from running for office?

At school board, the five candidates will be current school trustees Al Blakey and Allan Wong, former teacher Bill Bargeman, parent advocate Jane Bouey and student Alvin Singh.

Okay, everyone, now we can all take our weekends off with all three parties having held their nomination meetings. I’m sure it will rain from now until November every weekend.

The way the voting will work is that candidates will only be selected for nomination if they have over 50 per cent of the votes cast. So if one candidate (say, David Cadman) gets over 50, but the other four split the votes among them with none getting over 50, then the person with the lowest number is dropped and there’s a second round of voting. Theoretically, that means there could be three rounds of voting for council, because if the three candidates in the second round still split the votes relatively evenly, the lowest of those three will have to be dropped. Presumably, once it’s a vote between only two candidates, one of them will get over 50 per cent. (Thanks to Ivan Bulic for kindly walking me through this whole process while both of us were waiting in a line-up at VanCity yesterday.)

It’s a bit of a guessing game who the second nominee might be. There’s obviously going to be a bit of split in votes going for the two previous councillors — Woodsworth, who has been heading up the conciliatory-to-Vision group in COPE, and Louis, who’s been fighting what he sees as a bad deal with Vision down to the last ditch. Wong has been campaigning hard (and was the only COPE candidate who showed up at the Vision meeting last Saturday, presumably to make nice with future campaign mates). There’s some speculation that the moderates, for lack of a better word, might split their votes between Woodsworth and Wong, allowing Louis to come up the middle and win.

That means voters may have to stick around for quite a while this afternoon. However, it shouldn’t take as long to count the votes today as the Vision counters took last week, when the original count Saturday went from 4:30 until midnight and the recount Monday started mid-afternoon and went until 2 a.m. or some ridiculous thing. COPE currently has about 1,000 members in good standing and another couple thousand who are lapsed but who could vote today simply by showing up and renewing their membership. However, since the big meeting two weeks ago on whether to accept the slate deal with Vision only drew about 400, it would be surprising if this vote brings in more than that.

The meeting starts at 2:30 and is scheduled to wrap up at 6 at the latest. Location: Ukranian Hall on East 10th between Main and Quebec.

STEPAN VDOVINE STATEMENT

SEPTEMBER 23
For Immediate Release

Friends, supporters:

After a recount, lasting 8 hours and ending at 1:30 am this morning, the margin between myself and Ken Clement has narrowed from 8 to 6 votes. Myself and my campaign volunteers have observed the recount and we are confident that the numbers are accurate. The result will not be challenged by my campaign.

I am thankful to all of you for the support over the last number of months. This has been a challenging and exhilarating experience. I am particularly honoured with the strong support I have received from Vision members.

I am thrilled for Vision and its team for Board of Education, City Council and Park Board.

I am especially pleased to congratulate Ken Clement for an outstanding campaign. Not only is his unique voice is much needed and long overdue, but I also know that Ken has all the qualities to become an effective trustee. Ken and his colleagues have my full support.

Stepan Vdovine

One thing to note: If Kenneth Clement stays on, he will be, as far as I know, the first aboriginal school-board candidate. Clement became a candidate because local aboriginal leaders decided they should get involved in politics. He was part of a slate with Sharon Gregson and Narinder Chhina. Interestingly, Gregson won by a landslide, even though she wasn’t part of the Vision education group.

More tomorrow.

And it all depends on how those groups are filling out their slates. (Remember, no one is allowed to “plump”, i.e. vote only for their candidate or a small group. Everyone has to vote for the full set of whichever slates they vote on.) Vision’s president, Mike Magee, said just now that “there could be some surprises.” That’s been echoed by other party workers in the last while. That’s for two reasons. One, even the slate voters have to put some other names down. Two, there are still a lot of people coming out, inspired by the idea of a new party and a new way of doing things, who are actually sitting down with the party’s booklet on all the candidates and thoughtfully picking out exactly who they support. (You can imagine how long that’s taking at the ballot box, since they have to pick 16 names out of 37.)

All of that could mean that a current councillor or two might get dropped in favour of the new candidates who are drawing a lot of supporters. And there’s no guarantee who those new candidates will be.

By the way, compared to the last vote, where there was almost war inside the voting room over the difficulties being created for ethnic candidates to vote, everything seems quite quiet this time. I’ve heard some grumbling that it’s perhaps swung too far the other way, with families allowed to cluster around and all fill out their ballots together while looking at campaign material and so on.

What else is going on? In keeping with the folk festival/PNE atmosphere, there was some kid juggling something out on the paved section by the gym where everyone is gathered, while another kid was doing a rap song while his pals operated the video camera and boom box to film it/provide the sound while he moved through the crowd. There are more candidate booths than I realized before, because several of them set up on the greenway behind and east of the school: Geoff Meggs, Demitri Douzenis, Rey Umlas, and Heather Harrison, along with the tailgate parties by Andrea Reimer and the park-board crew west of the school. (By the way, in previous posts, I’ve neglected to mention that Demitri’s crew is quite numerous and noticeable in their black T-shirts with green and blue lettering.)

There are still some perplexed candidates being caught up in the whole slate/cross-endorsing thing. School-board candidate Stepan Vdovine, who’s been working with the Vision education group in that party of four, found himself included in a completely different slate, with Narinder Chhina, Sharon Gregson and Ken Clement — the counter group to the Vision education people. He’s dissociated himself from that one, but the sample ballots are being circulated. Sarah Blyth has also been working tightly with her group of four — herself, Constance Barnes, Aaron Jasper and Raj Hundal — but she, Jasper and Hundal have found themselves included in a ballot that Tony Kosovic is handing out, where he’s got X’s marked next to those three names and his own.

Those two ballots are being passed out by people who also have a council slate that includes: the four existing councillors, the powerful Coalition of Three (Andrea Reimer, Kerry Jang and Kashmir Dhaliwal) and, for that coveted eighth spot, Geoff Meggs.

That leaves Stuart Mackinnon as the Green’s candidate for the one park-board slate spot that the party got as its share of the agreement.

Mayoral candidate Gregor Robertson spent a while pedalling a bike that was generating some kind of power, while a band played next to him. When he got off that, I asked him what’s going to happen once the team is chosen — a team no one can completely predict, given the odd combinations of alliances that this race has produced and who has managed to get their people out today.

He said the team-building is going to have to start right away, to figure out where the common positions are and where the group — whatever it is — wants to go on issues. As alert political observers have noticed already, the Vision candidates don’t always have the same positions on everything. Shifting business taxes to residential is one, but there are likely others hidden underneath the Vision-building momentum. Robertson acknowledged that the policy on some issues “really depends on the make-up of the council slate,” once everyone knows what it is. And he said he’s not opposed to the idea of having free votes on some things — not sure what yet — but he thinks it’s good for democracy for different party members to be able to express different beliefs. We’ll see how that stands up if it turns out to be a 6-5 council.

In the meantime, the teams continue to bustle about: David Eby, Andrea Reimer, Rey Umlas, the Vision school board candidates, and the park-board coalition are the ones most in evidence.  But even those without teams or coalitions seem quite happy. I talked to James Gill for a while, the park-board candidate who impressed many at the candidates’ debate. Gill said he deliberately didn’t go out and sign up members, because he figured that by the time 14,000 people joined for the mayoral campaign, there weren’t a lot more people he was going to find who hadn’t already signed up. So he doesn’t have a team and was quietly standing by the gym wall eating a Lebanese wrap, but seemed quite content with what’s going on.

Gill said that while some people may have found the jostling for position a little rough in this first round for the party, he thinks it’s healthy and everyone can learn from it for next time. Someone who expressed an opinion along the same lines was Paul Evans (husband of Catherine and an international-affairs professor), who found the whole scene in the Tupper yard quite thrilling in a post-modern democratic way, with a completely unpredictable mix of people coming through the doors to vote.

It doesn’t look as though there will be anything like the 6,000-some voters for the mayoral race in June, but there’s still a healthy number, with 630 people through the door in the first hour. The slates and campaigns that everyone’s been mumbling about, as they get phone calls, emails and snailmails, are all out in the open now. All the campaign teams are out, determinedly going to the last minute, even in the downpour.

The Sarah Blyth/Constance Barnes/Raj Hundal/Aaaron Jasper park board coalition has its people out in yellow T-shirts with the names to vote for in green. The Patti Bacchus/Helesia Luke/Mike Lombardi/Stepan Vdovine volunteers are wearing teal. David Eby’s many young volunteers, all wearing lighter-blue T-shirts with David’s picture on them, are determinedly handing out brochures. Rey Umlas seems to be pulling a lot of people in on his own — not surprising, perhaps, considering this is the heart of the Filipino community. His volunteers are marching up and down in front of the school with his picture on their signs. A lot of Indo-Canadians as well, though not many Chinese.

There’s a certain sense of excitement, as the day is finally here. Longtime political aficionado Anne Gregory says it’s the most exciting thing she’s seen in all her years of being a member of this party and that. “All it took was to have someone young and good-looking and who makes juice,” she kidded Gregor Robertson in the hallway. But there’s also an undercurrent of relief that all the intense politicking is finally going to end. One man said a friend of his got 42 calls from various candidates in the last week or so, as the 37 council, school and park-board candidates worked over their Vision membership lists. (Woe betide the member who was on every list.)

I’ll post throughout the day here. For those wondering, results aren’t expected until about 9:30 or 10 tonight.