One of the big issues in this campaign season has been the discovery of holes and glitches in the province’s new campaign-finance law for local elections. It turns out third parties can spend whatever they want up until 30 days before the election, independent candidates who are a team but don’t register as an official […]
NDP has some things to fix with civic-election campaign law when this is all over
October 15th, 2018 · No Comments
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Vancouver’s centre-right party settles on a (surprise) winner, left agrees on council-slate numbers for parties
June 5th, 2018 · No Comments
Well, it was another exciting week in Vancouver civic politics, as the Non-Partisan Association, after weeks of roller-coaster drama, chose its mayoral candidate: the soft-spoken and unassuming-seeming Ken Sim. That came as a surprise to everyone, including Sim himself, it seemed, on Sunday night. All the spin and whispers up to then had indicated that, […]
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The archive of by-election coverage
November 8th, 2017 · 1 Comment
Catching up on posting some older stories here. First up: the stories before and after the Oct. 14 by-election, which provided a story with endless interpretation possibilities (Vision dead; no, progressive vote on the rise; no, NPA on the rise; no, people-power politics on the rise; coalitions the politics of the future; yada yada). First […]
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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 […]
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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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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]