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NPA holds private vote for mayor candidate, LaPointe rumoured to be the choice

June 3rd, 2014 · 25 Comments

Omg, those of us in civic politics reporting circles have been working feverishly the last few days trying to find out exactly wwhat went down at the six-hour board meeting the Non-Partisan Association held last Thursday.

Jeff Lee at the Sun and I both had stories out in the he last 24 hours, with whatever details we were able to scrape. There’s been a lot of chatter coming over the phones to both of us, I presume, that journalist Kirk LaPointe was chosen for the mayoralty candidate. (Jeff also got the info that former park board chair Ian Robertson was also one of the potential mayoralty candidates interviewed.)

But the NPA’s Peter Armstrong and Rob Macdonald refused to confirm anything, so it’s all just speculation for now.

Here’s my story and his. Oh, and to give you the sense of what kind of election it’s going to be, below is the message that Vision Vancouver sent out within hours of my story appearing.

Frances —
Today’s news is reporting that the NPA’s backroom have secretly chosen a candidate for Mayor. Not a single vote was cast by their membership, and they actually won’t even say who it is.

You read that right: the NPA now have what is surely Vancouver’s first ‘secret’ candidate for Mayor.

NPA President Peter Armstrong, NPA Vice President Rob MacDonald and their companies alone spent over $1.1 million trying to defeat Vision Vancouver candidates in the last campaign. That included the largest corporate donation in Canadian history, and now they’re gearing up to try again.

Don’t let the NPA backroom take Vancouver backward:

Click here to donate $5 or whatever you can afford to help keep moving Vancouver forward

Vancouver voters deserve fair and open nomination contests to select candidates for this November’s important election, and that’s what Vision Vancouver is delivering with our open nomination meeting on June 22nd.
The NPA’s secret appointment process shows once again that they just don’t get today’s Vancouver – and how important it is that we go forward with the positive and inclusive leadership of Vision Vancouver.

Thanks for everything you do,

Maria Dobrinskaya
Vision Vancouver Co-Chair, votevision.ca

PS. Whoever they’ve chosen, we know they’ll be well-funded. Can you chip in? Please donate $3, $5, or $10 today to keep Vancouver moving forward

Vision Vancouver
http://donate.votevision.ca/

-=-=-
Vision Vancouver · Canada
This email was sent to …
-=-=-

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Categories: Uncategorized

  • teririch

    It sounds like Vision is just a bit worried.

  • Bill Lee

    Later the same day, Jeff Lee offers a version on his Vancouver Sun Blog
    LaPointe or Robertson, NPA mayoral choice gives Vision Vancouver ammo.
    http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2014/06/03/lapointe-or-robertson-npa-mayoral-choice-gives-vision-vancouver-ammo/
    June 3, 2014. 2:47 pm • Section: Civic Lee Speaking

    The newspaper article (for the public who still read a newspaper) in Madame Bula’s short account above was time-stamped
    “By Jeff Lee, Vancouver Sun June 3, 2014 3:52 PM”
    Read more: vancouversun.com/news/Vancouver+keeping+mayoral+candidate+name+secret+more+weeks/9903791/story.html

  • Bill Lee

    @teririch // Jun 3, 2014 at 3:38 pm #1

    Or it is just the Matrix. automated computer response to general texts to a vast number of addresses in Vision’s logbook (and I wonder how many are from the City’s email logs, and that Vision Critical Survey-Vancouver database we are paying for)?

    Nowadays, no one knows if the other is a dog on the internet as the famous 1993 Peter Steiner New Yorker magazine cartoon made us realize that the Intertubes are a giant kennel. See the Morahan-Martin and Schumacher (2000) study on such.

  • teririch

    @Bill Lee:

    Vision’s Ian Baillie’s tweets to Van. Sun’s Jeff Lee focused on the non-nomination process, and calling out the undemocratic, non-transparent process (because we all know that Vision prides themselves on exercising democracy and transparency all the time) and seeming to forget that in 2005 Jim Green was elected to the Mayoral candidate position in the same way.

  • Chow

    I doubt it matters what the name of the NPA mayoralty nominee will be. He who pays the piper, Peter Armstrong, will call the tune and dictate the words ( and boy did he pay last time and will no doubt do so again).

  • Everyman

    Why does it matter to the average voter how the parties chose their candidates? The voters have the ultimate say at the ballot box in November.

  • F.H.Leghorn

    He who pays the piper $25,000 for lunch calls the tune that matters, for now.

  • Everyman

    On second thought, I’m rather intrigued by Mystery Candidate Number 3.

  • Andy Ferris

    Mystery Candidate 3 was clearly a non-viable stem cell clone of Rob Macdonald that couldn’t survive the NPA Board’s political aging process.

  • Kenji

    Jesse Johl! Jesse Johl! Jesse Johl!

  • Randy Chatterjee

    Everyman (6): “Why does it matter to the average voter how the parties chose their candidates? The voters have the ultimate say at the ballot box in November.”

    Read Walter Karp’s Indispensable Enemies to understand how democracy fails at exactly the nomination stage, depriving the public of any real choice and setting the policy direction and leadership of each party before the campaign even starts. The actual election is then truly meaningless because the stage has already been set. We in Vancouver of course see this same phenomenon in every public consultation before every Council decision.

    The lesson here is that we can expect the same decisionmaking behaviour in government as played out in the nomination process. If it is by back room candidate selection cabal, then so will the party also rule. It’s just another set-up, and a guarantee of no democracy at all.

  • teririch

    I see Vision is actively targeting the ‘ehtnic’ vote. (Funny, they don’t do much outreach wise until election time)

    http://votevision.ca/

  • teririch

    Sorry should be ethnic

  • boohoo

    For someone who so despises vision, you sure give them a lot of PR.

  • teririch

    @Randy Chatterjee #11:

    It is naive to think that anyone but Robertson would have been sanctioned by the Vision executive to run for the Mayor’s position.

    Not unlike Niki Sharma being raised up the ranks, over others, who may have left for that reason.

  • teririch

    @boohoo:

    Just curious, you are always so sour in your postings.

    No silver linings, glasses half full vs have empty, in your future?

  • boohoo

    @16

    Not sour at all, I often come here for a good laugh!

  • Higgins

    Maria Dobrinskaya,
    I would not donate, not even 5 cents to your Vision Vancouver gang. In fact I would like to ask for my money back. The money I got ripped off by you guys, in the past 6 years.
    Thank you.

  • Kenji

    How much, Higgins? Like, a lot?

  • teririch

    @ Everyman #8:

    Mystery Candidate #3:

    Leonard Brody:

    http://www.vancouversun.com/news/NowPublic+founder+Leonard+Brody+Vancouver+shortlisted+mayoral/9911366/story.html

  • teririch

    ‘The ruling party strategically approves developments that make their donors rich. Most notably, Wall Financial was a founder of Vision Vancouver and donated $280,000 in 2011. Since Vision came to power in 2008, Wall has seen its profits increase from $18 million to $61 million.’

    http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/mainlander/2014/03/bob-rennie%E2%80%99s-25000-lunch-why-vancouver-unaffordable

  • brilliant

    I see Vision already has web ads with Gregor’s vacant mug running. Three more years? Gold help us!

  • Andy Ferris

    It’ll be four more years there Brill-o.

  • Richard

    @brilly

    “Gold help us!”?

    That’s a bunch of bullion. 🙂

  • Bill Lee

    Maria Dobrinskaya
    Vision Vancouver Co-Chair, votevision.ca
    Created with NationBuilder, the essential toolkit for leaders.

    Why use NationBuilder, (“How is NationBuilder different? A: NationBuilder is a unique nonpartisan community organizing system that brings together a comprehensive suite of tools that today’s leaders and creators need to gather their tribes.”) when there are so many other so-called media-bots?

    http://nationbuilder.com/different Etc.
    Did Joe Green envision a right-wing bunch of civic politicos running a city into the ground with it for the benefit of the Speculator Class?