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COPE election sees young slate win decisively

April 5th, 2009 · 10 Comments

Alvin Singh, the young and articulate school board candidate who didn’t quite get elected last November, is the new external co-chair for the Coalition of Progressive Electors and he’s joined by a largely 20/30-something executive. Ivan Bulic has a good blog post on this in the Georgia Straight.
That’s quite a sign of renewal for the [...]

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Tags: Party Politics

NPA spends $1.3 million or so; Vision Vancouver rumoured $1.5

March 10th, 2009 · 9 Comments

That most exciting point in the three-year cycle of any civic reporter approaches, as the deadline for disclosing campaign finance donations for all candidates and parties in the last fall’s election draws nigh. I know that the folks at Beyond Robson will mock me again for beating them repeatedly with long lists of numbers, but [...]

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Tags: Party Politics

Vision homelessness efforts need to be solid

December 12th, 2008 · 10 Comments

My last CTV blog post looked at the debate over whether homelessness is worth trying to tackle (some people feel like it’s too big a job for the city) and also a warning about scrambling together homeless shelters too quickly.
As people in the Downtown Eastside know too well, those who have been sleeping on the [...]

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Partying with developers and protesting against Conservatives

December 6th, 2008 · 14 Comments

The Christmas party season kicked off last night with a bang. I was invited to, ran into or heard about six Christmas parties just in my own circle — everyone trying to get a jump on the main Christmas season, I guess.
One of the more amusing double-events of the night was the B.C. Federation of [...]

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What are COPE’s plans?

November 18th, 2008 · 2 Comments

City staff hadn’t even finished counting the votes when I heard people wondering whether the Coalition of Progressive Electors, that longstanding traditional left party that Vision split away from, was now going to become the official opposition at city hall. That’s because Vision has enough councillors to carry any vote at city hall, so COPE [...]

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Independent candidate wins at Last Candidate Standing

November 9th, 2008 · 3 Comments

While controversy over the city’s $100-million loan is raging in the media/blogosphere, the campaign is still winding along on the lower levels for many people.
And, at those lower levels, one of the more fun moments of the past week was the Last Candidate Standing event organized Friday night by Vancouver Public Space Network and Simon [...]

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Vancouver advance polls show signs of high turnout — the Obama effect?

November 6th, 2008 · 3 Comments

Everyone’s been predicting possible record low turnouts in the B.C. civic elections, with speculation that voters will be just too tired from the recent batches of voting to mark another X.
But that doesn’t appear to be the case. I dropped by three of the four advance polls today where everyone was reporting higher turnout than [...]

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Tags: 2008 Vancouver Civic Election

The Geller and Ladner kids invite you to a party in the Downtown Eastside

November 4th, 2008 · 11 Comments

This election has to be setting records for wild and wacky things the candidates are willing to try in order to generate noticeably scarce media coverage of the civic election.
David Cadman’s YouTube “Vote Beard” video (posted earlier on this blog) is probably the prize-winner so far. David says that the viral success of this video, [...]

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Possibly the funniest civic-election ad ever in Vancouver history

October 30th, 2008 · 2 Comments

The question on my mind after watching this video: When is David Cadman’s campaign to elect only people wearing garish and bizarre ties going to start?

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Tags: 2008 Vancouver Civic Election

Peter Ladner the most house-rich mayoral candidate

October 14th, 2008 · 6 Comments

This election campaign in Vancouver is a treasure trove for research junkies, since the candidates’ full financial disclosures are listed online — sorry to all of you whose privacy feels violated. (Go to the section where the election information is kept and there’s a link in the top right to their nomination and financial-disclosure forms.)
I’m [...]

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