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The NPA starts its rebuilding today

December 29th, 2008 · 2 Comments

The city’s septuagenarian political party, the Non-Partisan Association, will be meeting today to choose a new board of directors — one that will have the difficult task of figuring out where the party, which suffered its second disastrous defeat in six years, will go.

Charlie Smith has some perceptive analysis of the NPA’s potential winning cards for the next election on his Georgia Straight blog here.

One advantage the NPA has that he didn’t mention is the emergence of a NPA-centric blog, www.citycaucus.com, started up by former Sam Sullivan staffer Daniel Fontaine. If Fontaine and co-blogger Mike Klassen keep going at the same pace they’re setting now, they’ll be an energetic voice constantly on the attack against Vision Vancouver.

One thing that made Sam Sullivan so vulnerable during his administration — among a long list — was the way Vision Vancouver so successfully framed everything he did in such a negative way. It’ll be interesting to see whether Daniel and Mike, through the blog, along with Suzanne Anton hammering away out front, are equally successful at portraying Gregor Robertson and Vision Vancouver in a negative light: wasting taxpayer money, in the grip of unions, impulsive and impractical, etc etc.

It didn’t seem to work during the election, but that was such a short window of opportunity. Three years is a whole different story.

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  • spartikus

    If Vision provides the ammunition (as Sullivan provided in spades during his reign), then more power to CityCaucus. If it becomes just another mud-slinging machine, well, they’ll be tuned out lickety-split because it’s my feeling we’re all just a little tired of the hyper-partisanship of the past.

    And it could backfire for, as what happens on some of the larger American right-wing blogs (the few that allow comments that is), Vision-leaning commenters might perform political jujitsu pointing out absurdities if the arguments aren’t sharp.

  • Michael Phillips

    “…pointing out absurdities if the arguments aren’t sharp…”

    Hmmm…how about the absurdity of arguing that that the difficulty we are all having commuting and walking through the snow and ice in Vancouver right now is in any way the fault of Gregor Robertson and city council (www.citycaucus.com Dec 30).

    “Ok Andrea, you dig out the Drive! Cadman, you want more responsibility? Grab a shovel!
    Anton, I told you to put chains on all the bus tires! Don’t tell me its not municipal jurisdiction, get out there! If anyone needs me, leave a message with Maria, I’ll be pushing the B-Line around all day.”

    Give me a break. The reason it’s so hard to get around is because a lot of snow fell and because this is Vancouver and we don’t have a lot of snow plows. Yes, we temporarily need more snow equipment during the olympics, although I should hope that Vanoc thought of that a while ago. Now if the City refused to pay snow clearing staff overtime because of the depleted contingency fund, that would be news. If this upstart City Caucus blog wants to be taken seriously they can’t just throw slush like this and hope it will freeze.

    Sad to see that the CBC participated in such a tactless hit job.

    “So how do you think the new city government is handling this problem Daniel Fontaine, former chief-of-staff to the previous mayor from
    the other rival party?” “Badly!”

    Despite laughing out loud when Mr. Fontaine was introduced as “one Vancouver resident” distinguished only by possessing “his blog” I was compelled to write this:

    “I’m very sorry that my first letter to the CBC is a complaint, I usually am very proud of your network’s quality and objectivity. However, the next time a “resident” is selected to make local commentary about a situation which might reflect on the level of competancy of Vancouver’s mayor and council, perhaps the CBC could select someone who was not the former chief-of-staff to the previous mayor
    who held power under a rival political party to that of the current mayor and council majority. This was not commentary, it was a hit job
    by one party on another, and a news program shouldn’t allow itself to be used so easily for such purposes. If the CBC was bent on voicing Mr. Fontaine’s opinions it should have introduced the guest as the former chief-of-staff to the recently defeated mayor, in which case people would have treated his words with the mounds of snow-salt they deserve. I’m thinking of going to the ombudsman for the lack of disclosure on this one actually, please respond.”