January 28th, 2010 – With some trepidation, I pass along this grenade from Alex Tsakumis re NPA Councillor Suzanne Anton’s planned fundraising dinner.
As you’ll notice, if you can get beyond Alex’s wimpy interview style (joke, Alex), there are some nuggets of information here about the state of the NPA. This whole thing reminds me that the NPA has not held a major fundraiser since the election, which speaks volumes.
I remember that even after the NPA almost got wiped out in 2002, surviving councillors Peter Ladner and Sam Sullivan hosted a relatively successful dinner for the NPA faithful by about this time. It showed the party still had a few hundred followers willing to write cheques and that there was definitely life in the old beast.
The Tsakumis Factor: Vancouver’s Political Provocateur
Alex Tsakumis had established himself by 2010 as one of Vancouver’s most combative political bloggers, wielding influence through his caustic commentary on municipal politics. BCBusiness later noted that even NPA Councillor Suzanne Anton acknowledged his impact, stating: “My one voice in council isn’t very much for a political critic, but [Tsakumis’s blog] gives me a voice.”
The irony of Tsakumis targeting Anton—who would later become one of his few allies on council—speaks to the fractured state of Vancouver’s political opposition in early 2010. With Vision Vancouver controlling the mayor’s office and a commanding council majority, the NPA faced an existential crisis that extended far beyond simple fundraising challenges.
The $5,000-a-plate price point for Anton’s dinner became a symbol of the party’s desperate attempt to rebuild its financial foundation. In Vancouver municipal politics, fundraising prowess traditionally correlates directly with electoral success. The Globe and Mail noted that “in the past 25 years in Vancouver municipal elections, victory almost always has gone to the party that spent the most.”
The 2008 Electoral Catastrophe
The NPA’s fundraising struggles stemmed directly from their devastating 2008 election defeat. Vision Vancouver’s Gregor Robertson defeated NPA candidate Peter Ladner by 18,804 votes, representing not just a mayoral loss but a complete municipal electoral rout.
Vision Vancouver swept to power with what The Tyee called a “landslide victory”, capturing seven of ten council seats and effectively reducing the NPA to a rump opposition consisting of Anton alone. This represented the party’s worst electoral performance since its founding, worse even than the 2002 “near wipeout” referenced in the original post.
The scale of the defeat reflected deeper problems than campaign tactics or candidate selection. The Vancouver Straight observed that Robertson had successfully positioned Vision Vancouver as the change alternative to an NPA that had governed Vancouver for most of the previous decade under mayors Philip Owen and Sam Sullivan.
The Fundraising Desert
Anton’s $5,000-per-plate dinner represented the NPA’s attempt to demonstrate continued viability to Vancouver’s business community, which had historically funded the party’s campaigns. However, the premium pricing suggested desperation rather than strength—a small donor base requiring maximum contribution from each attendee to generate meaningful revenue.
The contrast with the party’s historical fundraising capacity was stark. Campaign finance records show that successful NPA campaigns had traditionally relied on broad business community support, with major developers, law firms, and professional services companies contributing consistently to party coffers.
By 2010, however, many traditional NPA donors had either shifted their contributions to Vision Vancouver or adopted a wait-and-see approach regarding the party’s future. The Mainlander’s analysis revealed that during the 2008 campaign, developer donations to both Vision and the NPA had been roughly equal at about $500,000 each, suggesting that the business community was hedging its bets rather than maintaining traditional NPA loyalty.
The Historical Context: Survival After Near-Death
The comparison to 2002 proves instructive about the NPA’s resilience patterns. That year’s near-elimination—when COPE briefly held the mayor’s office under Larry Campbell—prompted a similar soul-searching period. However, the party’s recovery then benefited from several factors absent in 2010.
First, the 2002 defeat occurred during a period of political flux, with COPE representing an experimental choice by Vancouver voters. By 2008, Vision Vancouver presented a more polished, centrist alternative that appealed to traditional NPA supporters uncomfortable with the party’s rightward drift under Sam Sullivan.
Second, the 2002-era NPA retained institutional connections and fundraising relationships that had been severed by 2010. The bitter internal warfare that led to Sullivan’s defeat by Peter Ladner for the mayoral nomination had created lasting schisms within the party’s traditional support base.
Anton’s Singular Position
As the NPA’s lone council representative, Suzanne Anton occupied an unprecedented position in Vancouver municipal politics. Unlike previous opposition periods where the party retained multiple voices, Anton was required to serve simultaneously as parliamentary opposition, party spokesperson, and institutional memory keeper.
Her later comments to BCBusiness about having “one voice in council” being insufficient for effective political criticism illustrated the challenge facing any individual attempting to maintain opposition presence against Vision’s overwhelming majority.
The $5,000 dinner thus represented more than fundraising—it was Anton’s attempt to demonstrate that the NPA brand retained enough value to command premium pricing from supporters. Whether the dinner succeeded in attracting the “few hundred followers willing to write cheques” that characterized successful NPA recovery efforts remained an open question.
The Broader Political Realignment
Tsakumis’s attack on Anton’s fundraising efforts reflected broader questions about the NPA’s future direction and viability. The party faced a fundamental strategic choice: attempt to rebuild along traditional pro-business lines, or reinvent itself to compete with Vision Vancouver’s progressive centrism.
The $5,000-per-plate pricing suggested the party was doubling down on its traditional base rather than attempting broader outreach. This approach carried both risks and opportunities—potentially generating sufficient revenue from committed supporters while potentially alienating the middle-class voters who had defected to Vision.
The fundraising controversy also highlighted how Vancouver’s political media landscape was evolving, with bloggers like Tsakumis wielding influence comparable to traditional media outlets. The fact that Anton later acknowledged his platform’s value demonstrated how fragmented opposition forces were seeking any available voice to challenge Vision’s dominance.
The Road Ahead
By January 2010, the NPA’s survival as a viable political force remained genuinely uncertain. The party’s ability to attract high-dollar donors to Anton’s dinner would serve as a crucial indicator of its institutional strength and future electoral prospects.
The challenge extended beyond simple fundraising to questions of relevance and purpose. With Vision Vancouver occupying much of the traditional NPA policy territory—pro-business while socially progressive—the party needed to articulate a distinct value proposition to both donors and voters.
Anton’s dinner represented a critical test of whether the NPA could maintain the financial foundation necessary for competitive politics, or whether Vancouver was transitioning toward a Vision-dominated system with merely token opposition.
