The much-awaited announcement about Kashmir Dhaliwal running with Vision Vancouver looks as though it’s set to take place tomorrow. This is the media notice sent out today:
The Temple Diwan Society Executive will hold a press conference to formally endorse Gregor Robertson’s bid to become Vancouver’s next Mayor. Kashmir Dhaliwal, President of the Khalsa Diwan Society and the Ross Street Gurdwara, will also make a special announcement regarding his immediate future.
For opposition spies who wish to observe, the event is taking place at 10 a.m. at the SFU Harbour Centre.
This ought to make the race very interesting for the Non-Partisan Association, especially campaign manager Paul Wilson, this year’s draft pick to win the race for the party.
Wilson has run any number of east-side campaigns for various politicians, including former Liberal MPs Sophia Leung in Vancouver-Kingsway and Anna Terrana in Vancouver East, along with campaigns for municipal politicians like B.C. Lee and Lynne Kennedy. So he’s got deep roots with the federal Liberals. So, as it turns out, does Mr. Dhaliwal. He has worked closely with Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh for years and has been very involved in the current simmering campaign for Vancouver-Kingsway candidate Wendy Yuan, who has been fidgeting at the starting block for a while now waiting for a federal election. Yuan’s campaign manager, just to tie this package up with a pretty bow, is Mike Hillman — the (very nice) federal Liberal organizer who first worked on Christy Clark’s short-lived but energetic bid to be mayor and then stayed on to be the honourary Liberal working with a largely Conservative campaign team for the Sam Sullivan/NPA campaign in 2005.
The more you hang around this town, the more you realize that it’s all a small world, with only a limited number of players for the two baseball teams in town.