Long before Gregor Robertsons lead over Suzanne Anton had widened from a sliver to a chasm on Saturday night, Sandy Garossino knew it was over.
An hour after polls had closed the independent candidate had already lost interest in watching the returns. Instead she mingled with supporters at Garossino HQ a funky house in the heart of Strathcona where 40 well-dressed artsy types danced to club hits under a spinning disco ball.
Garossino, who burst onto the scene last spring when she spearheaded the fight against the Edgewater Casino expansion, didnt even come close to landing one of the 10 council seats, but she didnt see it as a defeat.
I got more than 20,000 votes, she told the crowd after the election had been called. Thats more people than you can fit in Rogers Arena.
Not bad for a rookie candidate without the backing of a major party and a budget of less than $40,000. Everybody knew the odds were against her, and when it comes down to it winning a seat on Vancouver city council, you get what you pay for says SFU political science professor Patrick Smith.
Voters wont know for another six months what the tally is for the two main parties but with no limits on campaign contributions or spending, Smith anticipates Vancouver Votes 2011 will likely prove to be the most expensive election in modern Canadian history.
It raises pretty fundamental democratic questions. We do know at the end of the day looking at it backwards that those who spend the most money tend to do the best.
Saturdays election was no exception. Vision Vancouver and the NPA dominated the debates with campaign budgets of more than $2 million, according to estimates. And though the NPA secured only two council seats, its big-spending strategy still won out when compared to COPEs $341,000 campaign and virtual annihilation at the polls.
The trade-off, says Smith, is the ethical dilemmas that accompany corporate financing, much of it from developers. Council watchers are right to question how all that bankrolling influences policy decisions, he says. Im going to put it in the double negative: It cant not, but we dont exactly know how.
Thats exactly the deterrent for candidates like Garossino, but in this city running a campaign without developer dollars is a significant handicap. However on occasion such candidates do eke out a win, as in the surprise victory of the Green partys Adriane Carr, whose squeaker of a win came not as the result of her miniscule $15,00 budget, but through pure political capital, says Smith. Adrian Carrs done that by running so many places so many times. Carrs win on Saturday was her first win in eight bids to get elected.
That unlikely event fed the celebratory vibe back at camp Garossino on Saturday night, where supporters lauded the former Crown prosecutor as a visionary along the lines of Calgarys independent mayor Naheed Nenshi and seemed sure the former Crown prosecutor would run. For them, her candidacy alone was a win in itself as she managed to get on the medias radar by championing issues such as foreign real estate speculation and municipal campaign spending.
Garossino said shes fairly confident voters will see her on the ballot again but wouldnt commit to going the independent route again. Im not certain about that, she said. I think being an independent was a challenge. The bigger challenge was doing this for the first time and creating the machine. Well weve got the machine now, so thats half the battle.
It might be half over, but unless theres significant change to Vancouvers electoral system, the battle for independents remains all uphill.
