The past 36 hours has proved to be busy in the Vancouver civic election campaign, as COPE, the Green Party and the NPA are front and centre making game-changing campaign announcements, while lawyer Bob Kasting announced his candidacy for the Mayor’s chair, and the Cedar Party issued a press release on a major campaign announcement, for Friday at 1pm.
In the coming days, VanRamblings will provide coverage of COPE’s absolutely necessary $15 an hour minimum wage proposal (which we wholly support, we believe is entirely do-able, and has worked in Seattle), the Green Party of Vancouver’s platform and proposals for good government, and the Non-Partisan Association’s humane “no child will go to school hungry” campaign announcement (the one thing you know about the NPA is that when they make a campaign promise — all of their campaign commitments are eminently do-able — they will keep that promise).
In today’s post, we’ll focus on Bob Kasting — Vancouver-based lawyer and community leader, winner of the bronze medal and carrier of the Canadian flag at the 1972 Munich Olympics, adjunct business law professor at BCIT, and administrative law at UBC’s Faculty of Law, architect and hero of the triumphant win that halted construction of a 12-foot-wide asphalt bike path through Hadden and Kitsilano Beach parks, and currently the legal counsel for the False Creek Residents Association, who are battling Concord Pacific over commercial use — a sales centre — of land zoned for park space.
Vision Vancouver, you ask? Well, they’ve been quiet on the campaign trail, the Mayor mute, the campaign seemingly in hiding — Vision’s campaign honchos seem to think that remaining quiet, hiding the Mayor and Council, not agreeing to debates, and relying on the $800,000 in happy face television ads they’ll run in the final 2 weeks of the campaign will win them the election. Cynical Vision electioneering — par for the course with them.
Bob Kasting announces his candidacy for Mayor of Vancouver
At 5pm Wednesday afternoon, lawyer Bob Kasting announced he will run for Mayor, as an Independent candidate in 2014’s Vancouver civic election.
From Emily Jackson’s Vancouver MetroNews story …
“The lawyer who helped two neighbourhood groups launch legal action against the City of Vancouver over the past year is officially vying to become the city’s next mayor. Kasting believes the two major parties, Vision Vancouver and the NPA, are both too attached to developers and wants to bring a focus back to neighbourhoods.”
Make no mistake, Bob Kasting will perform a forensic audit of Vision Vancouver’s six sorry years in power, as only a powerful municipal affairs barrister is capable. Members of the Kasting campaign team have told VanRamblings that by the time a dogged, investigative Bob Kasting is done with Vision Vancouver, Vision will be left bloodied and begging for mercy.
Perhaps the definitive perspective on the Bob Kasting for Mayor candidacy comes from respected writer, historian, and longtime Grandview Woodland community activist, Jak King, who writes of Bob Kasting …
Yesterday afternoon, lawyer Bob Kasting announced his run as an independent candidate for Mayor of Vancouver. I had rather hoped he would announce many months ago in the hope that he could corrall behind him some of the seven or eight parties running for Council in November, But he is in now, and that’s good, especially as he is a great supporter of the Coalition of Vancouver Neighbourhood’s Principles & Goals document that outlines a much improved community engagement process for our growing city.
I support Bob Kasting as Mayor of Vancouver. He is a man of extraordinary learning and intelligence, he understands the nature of the City as a collection of definable neighbourhoods, he is willing to listen to a range of ideas for dealing with our Vision-generated affordability crisis, and I believe he has the ability to mold an “independent” Council into a tool for burnishing Vancouver into an even greater future. If we are ever to move Vancouver away from the idea of political parties in municipal politics (we are one of the last holdouts for that corrupting system) then having an Independent Mayor is a damn good start.
In supporting Bob Kasting for Mayor, Jak is clear that “four or five different parties vying to put together issue-based solutions” is his preferred option for the 2014 – 2018 Vancouver City Council.
In saying so, Jak supports the Council candidacies of the Green Party’s Adriane Carr and Pete Fry, and the Vancouver Cedar Party’s Nicholas Chernen (VanRamblings couldn’t agree more with Jak’s top three picks for Council!), and an amalgam of candidates from the NPA and COPE.
Time will tell as to who, come election week, will emerge as the most viable anti-Vision-Vancouver candidates.
Make no mistake, there are no circumstances under the sun in which the citizens of Vancouver should give even a passing thought to electing Vision Vancouver back into government for a third term.
For now, VanRamblings is pleased as punch with the candidacy of Bob Kasting for Mayor — we know him to be a fine man, and incredibly bright. Bob’s voice can only add to the din of criticism against the viability of another majority Vision Vancouver term at Council, and for that we are grateful for his candidacy, his wit, his integrity, and his commitment to the people of Vancouver, and to a fairer and more just city for all of us.
