All this talk of the NPA choosing a “secret” candidate for mayor is in need of a civic affairs expert who has been around long enough to provide some context.
And since I’m too knackered to search one out, you’ll have to put up with my look back at how civic parties chose their leaders over the better part of a decade.
Before I take you back, let me direct your attention to an email I received from Vision Vancouver’s co-chair Maria Dobrinskaya.
She was commenting on news reports about the NPA’s decision to choose its mayoral candidate by secret ballot, with only its board of directors allowed to vote.
“You read that right: the NPA now have what is surely Vancouver’s first ‘secret’ candidate for mayor,” she wrote in her June 3 email. “The NPA’s secret appointment process shows once again that they just don’t get today’s Vancouver — and how important it is that we go forward with the positive and inclusive leadership of Vancouver.”
Well, that’s very interesting.
Yes, it’s a fact that Gregor Robertson beat Raymond Louie in Vision’s mayoral nomination contest in 2008. Robertson became mayor, got re-elected in 2011 and has faced two leadership reviews from his own party; yep, they still love him.
But go back to 2005 and Vision wasn’t boasting about how it nominated Jim Green as their mayoral candidate. That’s because Vision didn’t have a nomination contest for any of its candidates.
Back then, the party was fairly new to the civic scene and its senior people said they had no time for a nomination contest. So does that mean Green and the four other Vision candidates in the 2005 race — Louie, Heather Deal, Heather Harrison and Tim Stevenson — were picked in secret?
I’d like to hear the spin on that one, and I believe I have but sadly I didn’t leave room for it in my brain’s storage locker.
Anyway, it was the same deal in 2002 with Larry Campbell. He was simply announced as COPE’s mayoral candidate. He got elected in a landslide, only to find out during his term that he had enough of “the wild-eyed revolutionairies” and helped form a more centre-left party, which became Vision Vancouver.
Say what you want about the NPA’s “secret” candidate for mayor but the party has had some pretty intense mayoral nomination races over the years.
In 2005, Sam Sullivan shocked many in civic circles when he beat Christy Clark in the NPA’s mayoral nomination race. He, of course, went on to become mayor; Clark, meanwhile, went on to land a fairly important job.
Sullivan didn't last long. He was ousted in 2008 by fellow councilor Peter Ladner in another doozy of a mayoral nomination race. Ladner subsequently lost to Robertson in the 2008 election.
So there’s a brief history lesson.
And very soon — maybe even next week — we’ll find out which “secret” candidate the NPA decided to go with in this campaign. Thanks to the hard work of yours truly and my colleagues on the city hall beat, you already know their names: Kirk LaPointe and Ian Robertson; Leonard Brody was to be the third amigo but he bowed out of the race Thursday.
And that, my friends, is no secret.
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