Hes inagain.
Mayor Gregor Robertson fought off a challenge from rival NPA mayoral candidate Suzanne Anton to convincingly win re-election Saturday and secure another three years of leading city hall.
This is a great night for everyone who believes in a bright future for our city, said an exuberant Robertson in a victory speech Saturday night to supporters in a ballroom at the Sheraton Wall Centre on Burrard Street. We have a very challenging agenda ahead of us. Our friends and our neighbours have given us an ambitious mandate to make our city better, greener, more compassionate, fair and more livable for everyone. Vancouver is a great city but it can be even greater. And I know that were all up to challenge.
With all 135 polls reporting, the 47-year-old Robertson collected 77,005 votes to finish more than 18,000 votes ahead of Anton, whose defeat ended the 59-year-old former Crown prosecutors two-year term as a city councillor.
Robertson acknowledged Antons challenge and thanked her for her dedication to the city as a councillor and park board commissioner, saying she deserved our love and respect.
While many public opinion polls released over the past few months predicted Robertson would be re-elected, there was uncertainty whether his Vision Vancouver party would hold on to its majority on the 11-member council.
That question was answered shortly after the first wave of results were posted on the citys website, showing that all six Vision council candidates would keep their seats at city hall and be joined by newcomer Tony Tang.
Vision councillors Raymond Louie, Heather Deal, Kerry Jang, Geoff Meggs, Tim Stevenson and Andrea Reimer were re-elected but will be without George Chow, who retired from council and was replaced by Tang.
The remaining three council spots went to former NPA city councillor Elizabeth Ball, who served under Sam Sullivan between 2005 and 2008, NPA newcomer George Affleck and Green Party candidate Adriane Carr, who finally got elected to public office after seven attempts and by the slimmest margin. She won by 91 votes.
Vision also won majorities on school board and park board.
Visions victory overshadowed a significant event in Vancouver political history: COPE, which ran a coordinated campaign with Vision, lost all its seats on council and park board and only re-elected Allan Wong to school boarda shocking defeat for the longtime left-leaning party that won a landslide under Larry Campbell in 2002.
Robertsons reign at city hall included driving an agenda to reduce the number of people sleeping on the streets, adding downtown separated bike lanes, leveraging investment to the city from the international profile of the 2010 Winter Games and adopting an ambitious plan to reduce Vancouvers ecological footprint.
The mayor and his councillors also rejected a bid from a Las Vegas-based company to build a mega casino adjacent to B.C. Place Stadium, implemented a program to give developers incentives to build rental housing and allowed sidewalk food carts to operate across the city.
Robertsons agenda didnt come without its critics, with taxpayers worried about their return on the Olympic Village project, business associations claiming the bike lanes were affecting the bottom line for storeowners and condo dwellers upset over public disorder related to downtown homeless shelters.
Anton, who was the NPAs lone councillor the past term, rallied her party during the campaign to poke holes in many of Visions goofy policies, including allowing residents to keep backyard chickens, building the separated bike lanes and providing a $5,000 grant to the Environmental Youth Alliance to promote growing wheat on 30 lawns.
But it was the Stanley Cup riot and the ongoing Occupy Vancouver protest on the grounds of the Vancouver Art Gallery that Anton attempted to use as wedge issues, accusing Robertson of poor leadership in handling both major events.
The protest overshadowed much of the 2011 campaign for all parties and will continue to test Robertsons leadership now that a B.C. Supreme Court associate chief justice has granted the city an injunction that calls for removal of the tents by 2 p.m. Monday.
If any of Antons criticisms resonated with voters in this campaign, it was with residents on the southwest side of the city; a map on the citys website that tracked the mayoral race showed Robertson won the majority of the East Side, all of the downtown peninsula except for Yaletown and Coal Harbour, all of Kitsilano, Point Grey and pockets of south Vancouver.
Over the next three years, Robertson and Vision councillors plan to approve a rent bank for renters having trouble making the rent, a landlord registry to identify problem landlords and launch a bike sharing program.
Visions economic agenda will be driven by the Vancouver Economic Development Commission-led strategy, which includes offering tax incentive grants to attract new businesses to the city.
The party has also promised a minimum of 500 new daycare spaces over the next term and creating a limited number of city attraction passes that will be available at libraries for residents to visit cultural and educational attractions for free.
When Robertson campaigned in 2008, his number one priority was tackling homelessness. Almost immediately after he was elected, Robertson secured funding from the provincial government to open up shelters, resulting in a dramatic drop in the number of people sleeping on the streets.
Homelessness, however, has increased by more than 300 people since 2005 and the provincial government has refused to fund four shelters this winter, which will likely result in an increase in street homelessnessdespite almost 400 new units of social housing opening this year. Robertsons goal is to end street homelessness by 2015.
With his victory, Robertson became the first mayor in 12 years to win re-election, with former mayor Philip Owen the last to achieve such a feat in 1999. Robertson and the new council will be sworn in Dec. 5 at a location to be released later.
More than 418,000 people were eligible to vote, with only 144,823 casting ballots for a 34 per cent voter turnout. In the 2008 election, Robertson won 67,598 votes with 31 per cent voter turnout. His NPA challenger, Peter Ladner, finished with 48,794.
Twitter: @Howellings
