Non Partisan Association campaign manager Norman Stowe takes comfort in pointing out that the polling trends around next months municipal election are heading in the right direction. That may well be. But if the latest publicly released poll measuring voter preference between Vision Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and the NPAs Suzanne Anton by Justason Market Intelligence is anywhere near accurate, Stowe and his candidate have a long way to go. Justason found a 36 point spread between the two with Robertson preferred by two out of three folks polled.
Its hard to imagine that gap closing in the next three weeks, although you have to give the NPA credit for trying. The difficulty they find themselves in, as former long-time NPA councillor Gordon Price told CBC Radio the other day, is that there are no significant issues. This is a campaign being fought over chickens and wheat fields; issues Anton and her crowd hope will stir the blood of their voter base, a base that would see these matters as symptomatic of an administration that is frivolous and wasteful of tax dollars.
The NPA has, predictably, now added the Occupy Vancouver tent city on the front lawn of the Vancouver Art Gallery to that slim menu in their ads this week in the Courier and Vancouver Sun; it is a $500,000 campground and Gregor Robertson says they can stay as long as they like because youre paying the bill.
All of that is by way of saying, when youre wondering about just how long the Occupy Vancouver crowd will be allowed to continue taking up public space in front of the art gallery and what the city might do about it, its worth remembering this is happening in the middle of an election campaign.
Anton would like nothing better than to goad Robertson into asking the police to charge in and move those rascals out. Robertson, of course, knows that wont sit well with his supporters. So while he appears to be impatient, I wouldnt bet on any force being used, without some sort of provocation from the occupiers, before we all march to the ballot boxes Nov. 19.
There is some precedent for this. Almost a decade ago just as the municipal election was heating up, there was another occupation. This one was at the derelict Woodwards building. It was September 2002. A developer had plans for the propertya mix of commercial and residentialand was waiting for permit approval. The homeless and their advocates on the Downtown Eastside were having none of it and moved in. As the encampment continued, COPEs Larry Campbell and the NPAs Jennifer Clarke sparred with each other over the mayors job.
Unlike this time, neither was an incumbent and so lacked the authority to order the cops or city staff to do anything.
The occupiers ended up staying, many in rain-soaked misery under tarpaulins until well after the election. Only then did the city along with one of the housing non-profits move in to offer the occupants alternative housing and clear them off the site.
I realize the Occupy Vancouver presents problems not apparent at the Woodwards squat. The folks on the art gallery lawn arent asking for anything as concrete or deliverable as affordable housing. But more than that, they are part of a global movement that is seeing people demonstrate in more than 1,000 cities and certainly resonates here.
Any place where the cops have gone in, including Melbourne and Chicago, there has been blood on the streets and an increased resolve on the part of the occupiers.
Anton announced her intension Wednesday to turn up the heat. Shell present a motion to council with a hard deadline to move the tent city at the art gallery in one week. It is her idea of leadership. If Robertson does as she suggests, his 36-point lead he now holds over Anton could seriously erode.
