Revelations on the collapse of the marriage of Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson continue to find their way into the public sphere.
In response to a Facebook post on Sunday evening, a commenter (and informed source) revealed the name of the woman with whom Robertson was allegedly involved: “His extra-marital affair with ***** is well known, she was on the City Hall payroll, now on the Vision Vancouver payroll.”
In a Sunday afternoon conversation with a friend, he asked that in order to protect the interests of one of the parties involved in the developing Vision Vancouver story — a person with whom he is familiar, and for whom he, and many, many others in our community have some very deep affection — that VanRamblings “leave the story alone.”
We would, but we cannot — although we will continue to not publish revelatory information about individuals involved in this ongoing story.
The central issue in this developing civic, and election-related, intrigue is not one of alleged poor judgement on the part of Mayor, but rather …
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How revelations related to the Mayor’s alleged improper conduct speak to the character of Vancouver’s highest elected official
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The impact that the drip, drip, drip revelations of alleged misconduct and impropriety by the Mayor are having on the Vision Vancouver goal to win a third majority term in Vancouver municipal government, and
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The civil, and possibly criminal, legal implications respecting the Mayor’s conduct if it is true that taxpayer’s money was paid to the Mayor’s liaison, and in consequence whether the Mayor met his fudiciary responsibility to the public interest in such circumstance
In the evening hours following the 2011 Vision Vancouver swearing in ceremony at the Creekside Community Centre, a senior operative on the Vision team told VanRamblings …
“The 2014 Vision campaign will be a difficult one. The Mayor, and Vision itself for that matter, have an inordinate number of skeletons in their closet, any one of which, were it revealed, would devastate the campaign and lead to a likely wipeout at the polls. I can’t believe that one, or more, Vision-related revelations won’t come to light before the next campaign gets underway.”
VanRamblings has been told that the “wheels are off the bus” on the Vision Vancouver re-election campaign, that despite a rousing defense of the Mayor by Vision’s very own Queen of Mean, Director of Communications Marcella Munro — and an entirely unnecessary, wrong-headed and nasty evisceration of the opposition municipal party, the Non-Partisan Association [you know your campaign is in big trouble if you’re placing the wicked witch of the west out front, to issue a statement to the press] — that the party’s velvet mafia are concerned, once the wheels are back on the bus, just what the campaign will confront around the next bend in the campaign road.
Meanwhile, Vision Vancouver is on the attack against Alex G. Tsakumis, the reporter who broke the online story of the Mayor’s marital breakdown …
“Completely LOVE how Vision Vancouver’s friends have corralled around the embattled Mayor of Vancouver. They seem to be claiming that the Mayor’s critics are vile loathsome rumour mongers and need to stick to policy. Meanwhile … the Mayor’s staff, battalion of PR hacks, accomodative local media friends, needy real estate consultants and political operatives have spent the last three days TRYING to smear opponents, their families, and businesses by attempting to plant stories to, as one reporter put it to me an hour ago, ‘ruin you and everyone else who won’t put down your spades and stop digging for the truth.’ Gosh, sounds like he’s innocent doesn’t it? No cover up, folks, please move along. Nothing to see here. Pathetic …”
In her Globe and Mail report on the Mayor’s “separation” from his wife, Globe civic affairs journalist, Frances Bula, revealed …
“Reporters who regularly cover city hall were called at the beginning of June by people in the mayor’s office to let them know the mayor and his wife were separating and that the mayor had moved to a condo in the West End.”
Such revelation in Ms. Bula’s story causes one to wonder why it is that no journalist in town reported on the said “separation”.
Does the press — in the interests of transparency and keeping the public informed — not have a reportorial duty to reveal such information to the public, particularly when it concerns the Mayor of the third largest city in Canada? While it is true that Ms. Bula, and others in the media, have now reported out on the story, would the information of the Mayor’s marriage breakdown ever have been reported, had Mr. Tsakumis not published his Facebook post Friday night, and revealed the details of the separation?
One would have to assume that, as seasoned journalists, those who were “called into the office” must have understood what the potential impact the revelation of the Mayor’s marital breakdown might possibly have on the Mayor’s bid for re-election this autumn. One wonders, too, why Vision Vancouver didn’t get ahead of the story, and have their journalist ‘friends’ report out — isn’t that a central tenet of Crisis Management 101?
One is left to ponder what the well-experienced professionals who constitute Vision Vancouver’s velvet mafia campaign team must have been thinking — surely they’ve been to this rodeo before many, many times, and would know full well what the downside might, and would probably, be if they didn’t get out ahead of what - surprise surprise - is now a potentially far more damaging story than would have been the case had they issued a simple, early June press release on the matter, with all the attendant spin.
As Clinton-Gore strategist Paul Begala once said on the campaign trail, “Politics is show business for ugly people” — following from Mr. Begala’s pithy aphorism, it is not difficult to determine why it is that there is so much interest attached to the story of Robertson political ‘intrigue’.
On Saturday, VanRamblings tweeted out …
In respect of the first tenet, and this particularly would be true for folks who are, or have found themselves, secure within a successful, loving relationship - what Vancouver voters must know is that Mr. Robertson no longer has his closest and most trusted confidante to advise him and provide succour during the course of what will most assuredly be a very difficult autumn electoral campaign - which circumstance must be devastating for him, and perforce his upcoming re-election campaign.
Reports are, too - and this, again, would be true of most marriages - Mr. Robertson’s spouse was the brighter and more savvy of the two politicos, and the loss of her companionship and counsel cannot help but have a traumatizing impact on his ability to perform to par, even despite the advice of a first-rate campaign team, over the course of the coming four months.
In respect of the second tenet: if you have studied, at all (as has VanRamblings), the development of social policy and the body politic, you would know to a certainty that the second truism is just as applicable to the federal Tory cabinet as it is to the conduct of municipal affairs in the city of Vancouver, and all circumstances beyond of a political nature.
Make no mistake, the Vision Vancouver electoral campaign is reeling.
In 2002, when the NPA’s Jennifer Clarke conducted a coup d’etat against sitting NPA Mayor Philip Owen, the NPA were devastated at the polls that November. In 2005, with the Coalition of Progressive Electors’ rent by division, COPE went down to ignominious defeat, and Vancouver’s natural governing party, the NPA, was once again re-elected to majority municipal government. In 2008, with members of the NPA once again at each other’s throats, NPA Councillor Peter Ladner mounting a successful challenge to NPA Mayor Sam Sullivan, the NPA were all but wiped out at the polls.
Vancouver voters do not like drama. Drama equals defeat at the polls.
For six years now, Mayor Gregor Robertson has been almost unassailable - despite his occasional egregious, verging on amoral conduct - the perfect and well-chiseled Teflon figurehead for his Vision Vancouver municipal party.
But now - given all the cries arising from the community for the defeat of Robertson and his Vision colleagues - a ‘circumstance’ has developed that is unrelated to policy, development, park maintenance or the myriad other areas of civic jurisdiction for which a municipal government is responsible.
Whether Vision Vancouver likes it or not, there’s a whisper campaign going on out there, a campaign over which they have no control. The core message of the 2014 Vancouver civic election campaign is slowly changing — and VanRamblings would suggest, the prospects for Vision Vancouver in the lead up to, and on, November 15, 2014, are not good, not good at all.
