What happened to the NPA? And what now?
This once-dominant civic party barely survived the results of the November election. But some of the central organizers of the campaign have few regrets: they still believe the negative campaign they conducted could have worked. Regardless, they argue, there was little choice, given the moribund state of the party after its defeat three years ago, a passive board, a lazy media and a popular mayor.
All that may be true. But they chose the wrong kind of negativity.
Ridicule didn't work. The repetitive mocking of "chickens and wheat fields and bike lanes" messaged contempt very effectively, in the style of the City Caucus blog cofounded by candidate Mike Klassen, but it was also making fun of people – young people, in particular – who were comfortable with the "greenest city" mantra that Vision had promoted and who found the NPA mockery simply annoying. A lot of them turned out to live in places like West Point Grey.
It also meant the NPA had to give up the centre ground that, until then, it had a right to claim.
The NPA (disclosure: when I was on council) had led the country in green initiatives and had fashioned a city that became an international model of successful and marketable sustainability.
Now it looked as though the association was shifting to the "Rob Ford"-style right. No more war on the car. A return to common sense. A promotion of traditional industries. When it came to being green, the message was clear: no more of that silliness.
The NPA's backers, principally downtown businessmen with little experience in municipal campaigns, wanted to take advantage of the anger and frustration that the separated bike lanes had generated in their crowd – people who felt they were being inconvenienced for the sake of self-righteous greenies. Clearly the wrong kind of people were running things, and they felt the public would wake up if only the messenger was loud enough.
They also wanted to portray Gregor Robertson as an out-of-touch, muddy-headed leader who wasn't man enough to be mayor – as his handling of the riot and Occupy Vancouver revealed.
"Vision had the pretty one," said one insider. "We have the smart one."
But ridicule and mockery in this case turned out to be bad politics. The NPA mayoral candidate, Suzanne Anton, immediately struck a tone of shrillness and seemed to lack authenticity. But the polls were being positively interpreted at campaign headquarters, particularly when the opportunity to criticize the city's handling of Occupy Vancouver seemed to put the NPA in striking distance.
Vision, on the other hand, didn't respond to the ridicule. It didn't have to. It saw from its polls that the NPA strategy wasn't working. So it kept to the positives and, given a lack of enthusiasm for its councillor incumbents, promoted newcomer Tony Tang.
Few expected a defeat of Vision. Even the business community was not anticipating a change of mayor. Come election night, though, the NPA was surprised at how well Vision did: all its candidates elected, Gregor Robertson up 10,000 votes. But, in consolation, it felt the party had performed well enough to still be taken seriously.
So what now?
Almost everyone is agreed: a permanent organization must be put in place, an actual party, not a Brigadoon that emerges from the mists every three years. More practically, the NPA needs campaign organizers with municipal experience, armed with the latest technology.
And that means money. Businessman Peter Armstrong – steady, committed, generous throughout – had joined with developer Rob MacDonald to fund and manage the campaign, and much now depends on whether they or others will continue to do so. And whether they want the association to lean further to the right. Of course, the two elected councillors – George Affleck and Elizabeth Ball – will be left, by default, as both the spokespeople and the strategists, but it is not yet clear where they want to take the NPA.
There is, of course, the traditional ground for the west-side rooted association: defenders of the status quo, champions of the established neighbourhoods, representatives of fiscal responsibility. The NPA during the campaign had seceded the anti-growth ground to Neighbourhoods for a Sustainable Vancouver, and it did not use the credibility of its own candidates – Bill McCreery and Dave Pasin in particular – who wanted to push that button.
Ironically, it was left to Green Party leader Adriane Carr to run on a platform of cautionary skepticism, even about density and bike lanes. Joined with NPA in the face of Vision's upcoming pro-development housing policies, this could lead to one of the more curious alliances in civic history. •
