It has been said that parties at the provincial and federal level are a necessary evil, but at the municipal level, they are necessarily evil.
We witnessed that truth in Metro Vancouver?s recent at-large elections, especially in the City of Vancouver, where partisan punch-ups turned into a blood sport.
The 2011 Vancouver election sticks in my mind as the million-dollar campaign. The NPA could be said to have spent $1 million to get each of its two new top-of-the-alphabet council members elected. Vision Vancouver probably spent similar amounts for its more successful showing, parading itself as a party of the centre-left while being bankrolled by the likes of .001% developer Peter Wall, who deftly eviscerated his sometime developer partner and NPA-bankroller Rob McDonald with a dare to bet $1 million that Suzanne Anton would win. McDonald admitted defeat by demurring, even as he gambled vast personal sums on the apparent chance to run the city as the NPA mayor?s chief of staff.
It?s time for the NPA to get out a huge vacuum and suck up all the people who think every political opponent is evil, and that job No. 1 is to eliminate them. It?s a tiresome, downer strategy borne of three years of citycaucus.com blog?s partisan putdowns – hilarious to family and friends, but tedious and irritating to anyone who cares more about the city than about hating Vision and COPE (RIP). (Was that blog really funded by former mayor Sam Sullivan?s 2008 election war chest?)
The chicken coops and wheat field theme backfired on the NPA. It might have worked as a throwaway line in a speech, but to build a campaign around such complete irrelevance, bundled as ridicule of all things green, was the height of misjudgment.
Defeated NPA candidate Sean Bickerton no doubt had it in mind when he lambasted ?a mayoral campaign based on puerile, sophomoric, gotcha-style attacks and trivial wedge issues.?
Rob McDonald?s last-ditch letter to supporters describing Vision as ?the worst government in living memory and it can all be traced to the FAILED LEADERSHIP of Mayor Moonbeam,? was the final ugly example of that.
Show us a vision for the city that?s proactive, not reactive, please. Pay some respect to public support for local food-growing and cycling, the two healthiest, fastest-growing trends in cities across North America, please. The NPA is struggling to catch up to a changing world. Building on its brittle, aging roots as the non-party that delivers frugal governors who stick to pipes, police and pot-holes basics (OK, with some drug diversions), the 2011 campaign painted Vision?s green agenda as a flaky frill when it?s actually a survival strategy. Young and savvy voters know that.
The 2011 election leaves the city in a sad state: polarized, with politicians dependent on stupid new levels of election spending, mostly financed by developers and unions with heavy vested interests.
At-large slate voting keeps out eager, smart independents like Sandy Garossino, then pushes major decisions into backroom caucus meetings, with council chambers for appearances only.
It?s time to revisit proposals to end developer, union and American campaign funding; to disclose donations in advance of election day; to cap election spending; and to bring in a single transferable vote or (even partial) ward system or whatever it takes to simplify the ballot and lower the costs of getting elected.
Vision should be congratulated on its effective organizing and strong showing. Best wishes with the noble pretense that city spending can create affordable housing and end homelessness.
What Vision could do is end the no-talking reign of terror at city hall that has staff morale circling the drain. And lay out the plans for density that doesn?t depend on developer initiatives, with affordability then undermined by capricious community amenity extractions.
The sky will not fall with another Vision term, and it will certainly brighten with the departure of the NPA?s dark-cloud strategists who mistake wedges for building blocks.
