Swinging partners at City Hall

The governing party is fractured leaving room for an NPA resurgence

by Reed Eurchuk <reurchuk@republic-news.org>

What is it with Vancouver city politics? Seven months away from the next city election, and already you need a scorecard to keep track of the fractures, dependencies, alliances, and possible coalitions that could determine the outcome of the next civic vote.

Remember the election of 2002? That’s the one where ex-Mayor Phil Owen lurched around in the background, a knife firmly in his back, haunting the mayoral throne like Hamlet’s father, a victim of “murder most foul.” Well here we are in 2005 and once again the intrigue is so thick you need a knife to cut through it.

Let’s see: Mayor Larry Campbell came out of nowhere in 2002 riding on COPE’s good name, voter discontent due to the shanking of the avuncular ex-Mayor, and a city wide wave of social awareness about homelessness, IV related AIDs, drug overdose deaths and the drug quarantine area around Main and Hastings.

Instead of a social agenda, however, Campbell’s reign has been punctuated by a string of mega-project announcements—the Olympics, RAV, and the Convention Centre. Other levels of government shoulder much of the financial burden for these projects which promise property developers, tourist companies, hoteliers and related entertainment industries an embarrassment of riches.

Any business-oriented government would embrace the projects. But COPE was not previously considered a business party, and there lay the rub. At the same time, Campbell has backed measures not associated with COPE in the past, like raising fares for transit users, raising home owner property taxes, support for the local casino industry, and large funding increases for the already-bloated police budget.

The COPE regime has engaged in many worthy social projects—the safe fixing site, an attempt at a moratorium on SRO hotel conversions, the funding of day care spots, the proposed development of the Woodwards Building, and an ethical purchasing program. These are healthy currents, but modest compared to the tidal wave of development thundering on the city. The developments will continue for the foreseeable future, given the time frames attached to the government investments. Vancouver is drunk on bubble-money speculating on real estate and a spike in tourism and entertainment-industry business—all associated with the upcoming projects.

Predictably, the developers have flocked to embrace the mayor. And they are shelling out record amounts of cash already. A recent “Friends of Larry” fundraiser—sponsored to the tune of $30,000 by four large local developers, some of them with projects currently before the city—charged a modest $1,500 per table. The local development and entertainment industries attended the 500-seat fundraiser in droves. So did some local unions.

As a result, Campbell has his own little non-party, the aforementioned “Friends of Larry,” which does not have to deal with the messy details of democracy. It has no party apparatus and no formal mechanisms for member input. It’s just a big money machine. Ideal. And Larry and his friends can leave behind an ugly debt from the last contest that will conveniently continue to handicap COPE.

Now consider COPE. Saddled with a large debt and threatened with desertion by sundry labour bureaucrats, COPE sits at a crossroads. The party had a successful sold-out fundraiser recently too. They charged $45 a ticket and raised about $15,000. Compare and contrast.

At the top of 2005, I wrote here to watch where labour sides in this battle. On cue, the head of Vancouver and District Labour Council, Bill Saunders, used the front page of the Vancouver Sun to crow that the labour bureaucrats are down with Larry. “COPE is not acceptable in its current format,” Saunders declared. An alternative would be to have the “Friends of Larry” take over the centre-left; “that’s a possibility quite honestly,” Saunders warned. With both the Friends of Larry and the NPA likely to raise around $1 million each for the next election, and with labour bigwigs threatening to withhold vital funds from the party, COPE is clearly in a difficult position.

Meanwhile, COPE can’t be seen to drop King Larry. Such a move would alienate a large group of voters and provide fuel for Campbell’s on-going red-baiting. (He recently said the “Friends” are not “locked into a box of ideology and revolution” in an obvious implied comparison with COPE.) As well, the labour bosses love Larry’s mega-projects, and if COPE dumps Campbell it would give the labour kingpins a green light to migrate to Campbell.

The mayor and his “Friends” will also find it difficult dropping COPE. First, they too could offend a portion of those voters who continue to feel COPE is doing a good job—62% according to a recent Ipsos-Reid poll for the Globe and Mail. Second, COPE could run a strong campaign on very little money relative to their opponents because they have a large group of staunch supporters around them.

Caught on three sides by their debts, the threats by key funders of desertion, and the difficulties in dropping Campbell, COPE finds itself needing to coalesce with others in the upcoming election. Meanwhile, Campbell is not in such a powerful position as it appears. COPE continues to poll high, and COPE could split the vote municipally, allowing the NPA to go up the middle.

Never underestimate the power of the NPA. The NPA awaits, stage right, the opportunity to sway Campbell to their side, the way they did with past Mayors Alsbury and Tom Campbell, and the way they controlled supposedly non-NPA mayors such as Art Phillips and Jack Volrich. The city Greens and COPE should be natural allies, but they share the common funding problem and the Greens are disorganized. Vancouver real politick suggests that strange bedfellows may continue to co-exist.

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