Do-it-yourself Punditry

Vision got a scare. They lost control of the school board and the park board, had their council majority reduced and had a closer call than usual in the mayoralty results. The main reason for the setbacks, at first glance, seems to be COPE’s lack of cooperation with Vision this time around. The centre-left vote was split. So I don’t think Vision will need to make major policy adjustments, but they’ll want to do some tweaking with regard to public perception of their commitment to community consultation, density targets along transportation corridors and ability to solve homelessness.

The electoral results map will be quite telling, now and we’ll into the future. If the North vs. south of 16th Avenue divide holds, it will show that generally denser areas prefer the centre left while the less dense or suburban areas prefer centre right. Similar to blue and red states in the US of A.
If true, it will also show that the GW Plan and Rize kerfuffles didn’t tick off their respectives ‘hoods as a lot of people might have thought. Certainly my millennial children living in Mt. Pleasant and central Main Street remained pro-Vision (bikes, environment, etc., etc.).

For the next 4 years, until Nov 2018, we’ll see:
– some distasteful battles with the Vision Council attempting to override the Park Board’s jurisdiction.
– Broadway mega-transit is dead, a good thing, as now the clear task is to properly populate Jericho, instead of daily shipping students & staff across town from less-pricey housing in East Van to campus.
– possibly 1 or 2 Vision councillors running (w/o losing a coumcil majority) for the Nearly Dead Party in the May 2017 provincial election, and then – if they’re in a riding that safely votes for a losing party – resigning, causing a mid-term byelection. The only motivation is to bump up from $68k to $102k/annum.
– come to think of it, a skip from majority rule at the civic level to the perpetual comfort of MLA opposition might be a safe move, if after a decade-long regime, Vision is decimated at the next civic election. Yes, I too thought of the end of the lost decade – BC has a history of almost extincting the Left if they’re given too much term. However, there’s enough transparency in large cities (and Vision has enough decency), not to see a repeat of the criminality of BingoGate, CasinoGate, etc.
– I agree with Chuck above, although ‘dead wood’ is the word I’d use. There were a handful of genuine candidates – of various stripes – that would have added much more value rather than old dawg Tim Stevenson, who I believe will be 75 or so when this next term ends. Shows how slavishly blind Vision voters can be; many may be unaware he came from that oportunistic, late 90s NDP, the most corrupt (and criminal) regime in BC history. His sole purpose now is to be nudged awake by Heather to raise a hand to make sure a Vision vote passes. Would be better to allow someone like Reimer or Meggs to use both hands.

Also surprised that another Green was added to Council. People seemed to have heard Vision’s call not to split/waste your vote on Cope or Green or indies.

Full disclosure: I volunteered with Vision for the first time in this election. The get-out-the-vote effort was crucial, given the high NPA turnout and vote-splitting with COPE. A lot of people stood in line a long time — over 1 hour at Kitsilano Community Centre — to express their displeasure with the incumbent government. It was only because Vision motivated its base that they managed to hold on to Council.
Many of my acquaintances, only loosely associated with Vision, were kind of spooked at the idea of the urban momentum coming to an abrupt stop. There was a sense that the NPA would dismantle (physically or otherwise) many of Vision’s well-intended initiatives, without offering any specific alternatives. It didn’t take much reflection to realize that voting Vision was necessary, despite reservations. As I noted in a comment above, Mount Pleasant and Grandview went for Vision in overwhelming numbers. Evidently a lot of voters were also spooked at the prospect of a Vision shut-out, enough to get them out to crowded polling stations and avoid ballot-splitting.
That said, part of me thinks five Vision councillors may have been better. Even though Tony Tang swapped out for De Genova, we essentially have the status quo on Council, and no real admonishment of Vision beyond the Park and School Boards. Five Vision councillors would have also forced Carr into the hot seat, and both policy and the Greens might have been better for it.

Nothing has changed. To those of you who wanted change, you failed to bring it about. To those of you who were happy with the status quo….it remains in place.

One thing is clear. There are some people who claim to be community representatives that don’t represent the views of many people in the community. Even worse, they claim the city is not listening to them while they aren’t even listening to others in the community.

Couple of thoughts:
1) The lower vote for Vision is the product of spent political capital. When you have a big majority, you either use it to make change knowing that it will result in worse performances in coming elections or you try to be all things to all people in a holding patternand sacrificing real change. The purpose of a big electoral majority is not to perpetuate it but to use it. I hope the Vision strategists don’t internalize the “sending a message” point of this election and move to a holding pattern. Municipal politics is about making the tough decisions that actually improve the city (at the cost to some); it should not be about creating a perpetual governing party.
2) It will be very interesting to see how council sets itself up in the next four years. Vision is in an interesting position with many of their influential members getting long on the political arc. What would the ideal strategy for that party be with Robertson and senior councillors potentially moving on? One approach would be to continue to shape the axis on which Vancouver politics are fought. That would require more determination on community densification, green initiatives, and transport alternatives. It would come at further electoral cost for Vision but it would set up the long-game where all parties vie to “own” the green, bike, progressive agenda setting up durable political change.
2) The NPA tightening the race in the last two weeks clearly worked to Vision’s benefit. It was clear through the Vision communications later in the campaign that the tightening was what they needed to motivate their supporters. I think the lessons of the provincial election were all too recent and that Vision knew they were up against a very motivated NPA base. Communications from Vision stressed how an NPA government was a real possibility, clearly leveraging fear and loss, power motivators for human behaviour. Had Lapointe’s team trailed behind at 6-10 pp I think that Vision would have been more vulnerable for a change in government similar to what happened to the NDP. It’s no surprise based on the overlap between those parties that they went negative and fearful. Once bitten, twice shy.
3)What if the NPA only ran a slate of 6 candidates for council? Did the NPA run of a full slate make their vote less efficient? 3 of the top 4 councillors were NPA. Have to think that they could have made a council majority if their vote wasn’t spread out over the last 5 candidates. Meggs and Stevenson won with less than 1 percentage point on the next NPA councillors in line.