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NDP wins put some gas in Vision campaign

October 30th, 2008 · 10 Comments

It’s an all-politics night here in the home nest as we watch CNN on television for the Obama-McCain news, while checking Elections BC’s website for byelection results, after having just come home from umpteenth civic election debate.

The debate in brief: Peter Ladner is more of a street-fighter in every encounter with Gregor Robertson, throwing punch after punch at Gregor’s inexperience. Gregor, on the other hand, is seeming more relaxed and even making the odd joke. More serious details tomorrow.

But the real news of the night was the NDP wins in two Vancouver byelections, with Spencer Herbert winning handily over Liberal candidate Arthur Griffiths by 1,600 votes, while Jenn McGinn is currently up by 600 votes over Margaret McDiarmid. That has to be worrying for the Non-Partisan Association and a champagne moment for Vision Vancouver. Those wins, combined with what appears to be an imminent Barack Obama win to the south, creates a potential mood of “Oh, what the heck, let’s just keep voting out all the oldtimers and go for the new guy.”

The challenge for Peter is whether he can convince voters that he stands for change, which is what he’s trying to do. Or maybe he can hope on that change the voters went for in the federal election where, here in B.C., they were far more inclined to go for the Conservatives than the NDP as they fled from the Liberals.

Categories: 2008 Vancouver Civic Election

  • Glenn Murtz

    Funny stuff…

    Peter Ladner crowed about a “global investment banker” potentially being part of the NPA council.
    In the same debate, he made a few remarks on the potential “economic meltdown” and the dangers it posed to Vancouver.
    So I’m wondering… couldn’t part of that meltdown be attributed to “global investment bankers”?

    Another thing …
    Gregor is a guy who willingly gave up his newbily (newbie adverbed) acquired NDP seat in the provincial legislature to run as Mayor. This strikes me as incredibly ambitious. Almost *too* ambitious and somewhat audacious really, and this seemed to be a talking point for Ladner too, though the thought of one politician calling out another one for being too “ambitious” is laughable. Not that Ladner didn’t try it…

    I also liked Ladner invoking the “COPE/Vision” term, as if COPE were somehow going to be infecting Vision with some dirty hippy-ish commie ideology – and driving the decision making at City Hall… I’m pretty sure I caught Gregor smirking at that too…

    Huzzah on the 2 NDP wins. A shame they won’t get a chance to warm the seats in the legislature, since, as we all know by now, we don’t have one in this province …

  • Ideologue Cabin

    Bad news for the NPA, for sure. Everyone keeps talking about how Peter will win if turnout is low. The turnout for the by-election was even lower than the last civic election! those weren’t 20 somethings voting in Fairview yesterday – those were homeowners, and Peter might have to find yet another top priority to try and spark some Ladner-mania among the populace.

  • Tessa

    I don’t think the federal results are any comfort for the NPA either, considering of Vancouver’s five seats, the NDP picked up the only Conservative seat and the Liberals held their own, even if only barely in Vancouver South.

  • Bill Lee

    Just had a push-poll from Innovative asking if I had ever heard
    of Ladner and Robertson.
    Also knowing that BCTF members are running for school board would
    I vote for COPE if they were going to favour teachers etc.
    And the usual, union donations for Vision votes for council influence.

    Sigh.

    I had an South Asian (Indian) accented questionnaire.
    I imagine that I haven’t got the Cantonese pollster saying
    that the Left is going to nationalize property like in bad old China.

    Obviously they don’t care about the answers other than putting
    the seed of doubt into the non-readers of the community. The
    Pac Press deliver 4 papers to what I can see is 50 homes in my
    neighbourhood in the morning. We are not in the Courier demographic distrobution.
    And about 70 percent of those blocks are Chinese households with
    a mixed use of English or Chinese.

  • Same here

    I got the same push poll too. “Peter Lardner wants to lower business taxes.”

    guess the NPA couldn’t afford a phone bank with people who can pronounce their candidate’s name.

  • Scott

    The NDP win in Fairview was still by a relatively small margin.

    That said, if one looks at the 2005 mayoral map, VV virtually swept the area comprising Vancouver-Burrard and Vancouver-Fairview.

    http://vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/election2005/finalresults.htm#MAYOR

  • Bill Lee

    Linkname: http://www.smh.com.au – Secret is out on how to make people vote
    URL:
    http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2008/10/27/1224955951282.html

    Social pressure.

    Though as Mr. Robertson has discovered, we are quite alone
    in this city. The phrase “city of detached villages” comes to mind.

  • The Waif

    Will Vision please install a Free Public Drinking Water Fountain in every public building before they ban bottled water?

    As a resident of the ‘burbs, I was rather shocked to discover the main branch of the Vancouver Public Library, has no drinking fountains. (Or are they just well hidden? I did look!)

  • Wagamuffin

    Bill Lee; I saw that too…I’m not sure our privacy laws allow that. The Registrar of voters has the lists but I don’t think they are listed anywhere for the public.

  • A Dave

    A streetfighter from Shaughnessy? I know Ladner likes to kick homeless people around, but blue-haired ladies too? Kidding aside, when politicians start attacking opponents with greater frequency, it’s usually a sign that they think their campaign is in trouble.