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Suzanne Anton launches campaign as poll results show Robertson popularity up, Vision down

May 19th, 2011 · 17 Comments

It’s tough to unseat an incumbent mayor unless that mayor’s party is splitting behind him, but Suzanne Anton is going to try anyway. And she’s finally got some team support — something she’s struggled without until now — with Norman Stowe (last seen at the Kevin Falcon leadership campaign) heading up her campaign.

That should help sharpen her message and eliminate some of the confusing tangles that she’s occasionally gotten herself into on where exactly she stands with respect to bike lanes, casinos, affordable housing and more.

Suzanne will certainly rally the Non-Partisan Association base of voters, a committed group that delivers 30,000 votes minimum in each election. Now, in the next six months, she has to try to win over many more of the approximately 40 per cent of undecideds in the city.

This poll from Justason Market Intelligence, which I wrote about in the Globe, gives some idea of the weak spots Suzanne will be aiming for and the challenges ahead of her.

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  • Glissando Remmy

    The Thought of The morning

    ‘Floaters and Sinkers. I always wondered, how come some poop float and others sink?’

    Floaters. The kind of s**t you do at someone else house. In this particular case that would be the City Hall house. It has to do with the amount of Mayorthane in it, or as it is known in street-talk…Gas.

    Sinkers. Too much fiber or iron or steel or lead, materials that anchors are made of, which is a good sign. See what I mean?

    However, I don’t see how it would be possible for someone to deliver a Floater and a Sinker in the same load. It’s never been done before. Only someone with Vision could be able to do that.

    Why don’t we ask Penny? She is a medical doctor, and we still paying her a salary, right?
    After all she is Both.

    We live in vancouver and this keeps us busy.

  • Not Impressed

    Well, I don’t know how I can follow that…but here goes.

    Not sure that the NPA “base” is at all in lockstep with Ms. Anton. She has not exactly been a pit bull on many issues of substance, and there has been no discernable difference between her and the party in power in regards to policy—that has been spoken aloud at this point, at any rate. I suppose we’ll get a platform at some point. I see no inherent “leadership” qualities or skills.

    Regardless of how she says how hard it is to gain traction with the media as a lone councillor, the point is, she has not focused in on 1 or 2 issues, and owned them. In fact, I believe her confusing reactions on issues like the casino have certainly not won her any new friends, and quite possibly, cost her many old ones.

    Not everyone in the party is “100 % developer friendly” with so very few strings attached (and Vision seems to be doing quite well with that lot, in any event), so she is just going after Vision crumbs. As per usual.

    Given the above, she might find that some—or many— who used to vote for her, may well stay home on election day.

    Sort of divine justice, for her miserable attitude and performance during the last election.

  • EastVanEd

    NPA councillor Suzanne Anton continues to have trouble with her one-person caucus at Vancouver city hall. You may remember Ms. Anton voted in favour of separate bike lanes on Hornby Street. That quickly prompted a caucus revolt, however, when work on the lanes actually started the next morning, and Ms. Anton tried to have her vote changed.

    “Now, that feisty Anton caucus is quarrelling again. Moments after the lone NPA representative on city council supported Mayor Gregor Robertson’s motion that dealt a death blow to the proposed big gambling hall right next to BC Place, Ms. Anton was out with a press release criticizing the mayor for “voting against casino expansion” and jeopardizing a billion dollars worth of economic activity. Hello?

    Ms. Anton is an accomplished veteran of Vancouver’s municipal wars, and it’s not easy being the single Non-Partisan on council. So I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for siding with the mayor, then blasting him with your next breath for the same motion you just voted for. I just can’t imagine what that explanation would be.”

  • Everyman

    EastVan Ed, that’s not quite true. Anton obejected to the “kangaroo court” nature of the public consulatation, which was revealed when work began on the bike lanes mere hours after the vote. Thus she asked to change her vote as a form of protest for the disrepect shown the members of the public who were misled to belive they were being heard as part of meaningful consultation.

    For some reason it took the City over six months from start to finish to install a single bike light at 16th & Ontario, yet the Hornby Street bike lane was started mere hours after council voted. Hmm….

  • Richard

    @Everyman
    The businesses were concerned about construction impacts especially during the Christmas season. With the weather not being predictable, it made sense to do the construction as quick as possible to minimize the impact on businesses, drivers and cyclists.

    Some people are really impossible to please, If it was done slowly they would have complained. It was done quickly and they still complained. It is really rather tiresome.

    Consider the source, but according to AGT, Anton changed her mind due to political pressure from the back room NPA boys and girls who were desperately looking for campaign issues.

  • walrus

    What a losing cause if there ever was one. This is Jennifer Clarke 2.0.

    And guess who’s her campaign boss? Jennifer Clarke’s own, her old campaign guy, Norman Stowe, the Pace PR Group, Gordon Campbell’s old PR guy.

    Looks like Stowe is looking for another taxpayer feedbag to inhale our dollars on. He picked the wrong horse yet again, thankfully for the city.

  • Adele Chow

    The NPA is all about serving the narrow interests of wealthy, west side property owners. Always has been, always will … The rest of the city said “Enough is enough!” in 2008 and won’t let the NPA wreck the city again in 2011. Ever since I can remember, the NPA has brought nothing but three month or more civic strikes every three years in which the city becomes an absolute pigsty littered with garbage. That’s the NPA’s record–garbage!

  • Everyman

    Adele Chow, I’d respectfully suggest those strikes were part of an attempt to curb the runaway costs of the unionized city workforce. I wonder if Vancouver will ever privatize garbage collection, as they have just done in Toronto (and do in many other Metro Vancouver municipalities)?

    And have a look at the 2005 election map below. The NPA ran very strongly in parts of East Vancouver, so lets leave the class warfare rhetoric behind, shall we?
    http://vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/election2005/finalresults.htm#MAYOR

  • Sandy Garossino

    I have known, liked and respected Suzanne Anton for almost 25 years, since we were young lawyers together. She works incredibly hard and is wholly well-intentioned. I wish her well.

    Anton voted against the expansion of Edgewater’s casino license, and in favour of a moratorium on gambling expansion in Vancouver.

    This vote accords with the views of 59% of Vancouver west-siders according to the most recent Justason poll.

    It’s therefore very curious that Anton instantly disavowed her own vote and the strongly held views of her base on a major public policy question. No doubt she and the NPA would like to put that episode behind them.

    But can they?

    There is a curious dynamic at play, and one senses the presence of other interests lurking somewhere close at hand. It is quite plain that PavCo, not liking the answer it got from this mayor and council, plans to revisit the situation after the coming election.

    Here is where the plot thickens.

    With PavCo waiting in the wings with their shiny new stadium casino plan, a base that decidedly wants nothing to do with it, and a well-oiled Vision machine revving up to slam a candidate with a shaky voting record, just how far can Anton get from this issue?

    Not far at all, is what it looks like from here.

  • Mike A

    After all the big talk, after all the outrage, that’s the response? Suzanne Anton?

  • Max

    Seems there might be another contender;

    Carr considering running for Mayor http://ow.ly/4Z0AL #vanelxn

  • Agustin

    Interesting, Max.

    I don’t know if she would do well as a candidate for mayor but she might do better as a candidate for councillor.

  • MB

    @ Sandy 8:

    “Anton voted against the expansion of Edgewater’s casino license, and in favour of a moratorium on gambling expansion in Vancouver.”

    My understanding was that she voted against, then stood outside the Hall with the press a few minutes later and knocked the mayor for doing the same thing.

    There is a record of flip flops and paper thin childish rebuttal on several issues that was produced by Anton over the past three years, and in her previous term before that.

    I don’t believe she is mayor material.

  • Everyman

    If Adrienne Carr runs, Gregor better be afraid of some vote splitting. Plus, it will make COPE regret they were so willing to play the junior partner with Vision.

  • Max

    @ Everyman #13:

    It’s not easy being ‘green’.

  • Max

    @MB #12

    With the casino, council voted against a Vegas type casino, however, there will be a small casino, with the option of expansion:

    ‘A lot of confusion also stemmed from the actual vote itself. A number of media outlets reported that all of the councillors voted in unison to “reject” the mega casino. In reality, there never was a motion the table to reject a grand Vegas-style facility.

    Our civic leaders were simply presented with an option to vote for or against a new scaled down casino proposal at BC Place. All councillors except one – NPA councillor Suzanne Anton – disapproved of the expanded casino for various reasons. The Mayor said it didn’t fit his image of a “green city.”

    Anton argued that “half a loaf is better than none,” and sided with council’s decision to approve the project without expanding the casino.’

  • Higgins

    Sandy #8
    ‘I have known, liked and respected Suzanne Anton for almost 25 years, since we were young lawyers together. She works incredibly hard and is wholly well-intentioned. I wish her well.’ LMAO
    I cannot say the same thing about Suzane Anton, I don’t necessarily like her and the fact that she ‘appointed’ herself as the contender for the NPA but…You maam, are the wickedest back stabbing double talk Vision madam that I came across on this blog. You are better than Linda S to that respect. Whatever did you get out of that Vancouver not Vegas circus you guys staged at city hall? Ink in the obsolete MSM? A same size casino? Or you even a bigger size casino down the road? You are either against it completely or not, lady! So please do us all a favor and stop cutting the cheese!