Vancouver Votes 2018 | Non-Partisan Association

2018 Vancouver Non-Partisan Association candidates for City Council and Park BoardThe happy, smiling 2018 NPA crew seeking office for Mayor, Council and Park Board

Two months ago, VanRamblings would have told you that the Vancouver Non-Partisan Association was all but a lock to become the majority party at Vancouver City Hall come the evening of October 20th. Not anymore.
When the NPA announced its candidate slate on July 31st, initially we were impressed: six of nine of their candidates for Council are women! When three of the four Green Party candidates for Council are men, and with most of the other parties (save COPE) offering mostly men for office, the surfeit of accomplished women running for Council with the NPA reinforces the notion that the 2018 Non-Partisan Association is not your ma and pa’s NPA, but a decidedly more progressive centre-right civic governance party.
The more women in civic government, the happier VanRamblings will be.
But, alas, VanRamblings believes that all is not well on the NPA front when it comes to electing a surfeit of candidates to City Council this autumn (no reflection on the candidates, most of whom we know, like, respect and admire), so as to gain their much sought after majority at City Hall. Even though it’s still too early to predict, we continue to believe Ken Sim to be the odds on favourite to secure the Mayor’s chair come October 20th.
Where, then, has the NPA “gone wrong”, and how have they managed to hurt their chances to secure their much cherished majority on Vancouver City Council? Read on and we’ll tell you …

  • Outsized slate. With left-of-centre parties running shortened slates, with OneCity Vancouver offering two candidates for Council, the Greens 4, and COPE 3, how in tarnation did the NPA think that running a near full Council slate would do them at all well when it comes to the vote this upcoming October? Vancouver voters are not slate voters — you’d think the NPA, which ran shortened slates in 2011 and 2014, would know better than to run a near full slate, and risk splitting the vote among their ‘far too many’ Council candidates. Apparently not. Alas.

    We’ve heard from various sources within the NPA that it was NPA apparatchik Peter Armstrong and mayoralty candidate Ken Sim who wanted to run a full slate. Peter, sophisticated politico that he is oughta know better, and Ken Sim — well, maybe, he’s just a tad over-confident.

    Whatever the case, with some 50 candidates for Council running with nine different Vancouver civic parties (if you include Jamie Lee Hamilton’s IDEA party), and at least a few independents whose candidacies for Council could succeed (think Rob McDowell and Sarah Blyth), running nine candidates for Council is akin to the NPA shooting itself in the foot even before the election has properly gotten underway.

  • Division and dislike. Three of the NPA’s female Council candidates have a visceral dislike, bordering on hatred, for one another (and, no, we’re not going to say who those three are), which oughta make for fun times on the hustings and at all-candidates meetings in September and October, and not so much fun in the NPA caucus over the next 9 weeks.

  • Rob McDowell. In the 2014 Vancouver civic election, the NPA’s Rob McDowell secured 53965 hard-fought-for and well-deserved votes, has long sat as a member of the NPA Board, came up with the new purple colour scheme and the New Progressive Association nomenclature for the party. Rob — an incredibly bright man of much accomplishment, and someone we have long admired — is one of the most respected politicos in town, and is much loved, respected and admired within the party. And yet, and yet, Rob did not secure an NPA nomination for Vancouver City Council! How can that be? For VanRamblings, not putting Rob McDowell on the ballot beggars belief — and we are far from alone in believing that both within and outside of the Non-Partisan Association. Rob is now running as an independent — not out of a sense of pique, but because of his broad support in the community across the political spectrum.

Too many Council candidates, candidates “not on the same page” politically or policy-wise, and without Rob McDowell in the mix, the NPA would seem to be hewing to an overcrowded (far) right politically in the 2018 Vancouver civic election. All of which smacks of a hubris that won’t serve them well.
Still and all, VanRamblings has every intention of endorsing Sarah Kirby-Yung for Council (and writing recommendable things of at least two more), will support John Coupar and Casey Crawford for Park Board (and probably more NPA Park Board candidates), and will most assuredly endorse our friend Christopher Richardson for Vancouver School Board.
We know each of these very fine people mentioned above well, believe them to be great and good public servants of the first order, and believe, as well, that the electorate will be well-served by casting a vote for each.