In the 2018 Vancouver municipal election, Vancouver City Councillor Melissa De Genova was elected to a second term of office, finishing a solid third place in the polls with 53,251 votes, support for her re-election coming from across the city, in every one of the 23 neighbourhoods comprising our piece of paradise by the sea.

More than any other current Vancouver City Councillor, in the years since Ms. De Genova first assumed elected office in 2011, as a Vancouver Park Board Commissioner, Melissa De Genova emerged from the outset and continues thru until this day as a champion and a fighter for the interests of working people.

Now, it is true that Ms. De Genova has a long and glorious, ought-to-be celebrated history of driving the members of Vancouver’s partisan and arrogantly self-righteous, so-called “left” just nuts, driving them around the bend at every turn, as often as she is able — which in her first seven years of elected office was often.

Melissa has no time for “politics” when there’s a job to be done, a seniors facility to be built, a senior level of government to finagle into doing her bidding to ensure the delivery of programmes and affordable housing to the residents of Vancouver.

Melissa De Genova is always ready to engage with the electorate, be it on social media or one-to-one in person (there’s not been much opportunity for the latter in these pandemic times). When Melissa is challenged on social media — which is often — she readily engages, setting out the rationale for a decision she has taken around the Council table, engaging with whatever miscreant, unnamed person who is hiding behind a faux identity on, say, Twitter, thoughtfully and methodically laying out why she has taken the decision she has.

Inevitably, these online tête-à-têtes devolve, with Ms. De Genova’s “challenger” resorting to invective and name-calling. But still, Melissa hangs in, always respectful. With a current Council rightfully afraid of the pit of despair that is Twitter in 2021, only OneCity Vancouver City Councillor Christine Boyle is Ms. De Genova’s equal when it comes to dialogue and informed response to the too often egregious and ferociously vicious nature of the engagement extant on the Twitter platform.

One of the great joys of VanRamblings life in recent years was observing Melissa go after Aaron Jasper and Niki Sharma — and much to her chagrin, Sarah Blyth — when the four sat on Vancouver Park Board. Aaron Jasper’s conduct towards Ms. De Genova was supercilious and condescending at all times, as if she was somehow “below” him, and undeserving of even one iota of humanity that might emerge from him during his time as Chairperson of the Vancouver Park Board.

At the time, during the course of Park Board meetings, Melissa remained respectful of the Chair and her Vision Vancouver colleagues around the Park Board table — but when the meetings ended, Melissa De Genova lit into her Vision colleagues with a vigour that was something (of a great delight) to behold, calling them out for their wrong-headed “in the pocket of (then, ruthless and none-too-stable City Manager), Dr. Penny Ballem,” and their utter failure to represent the interests of the citizens who voted to elect them as Vancouver Park Board Commissioners.

In 2014, Melissa De Genova ran for office under the Non-Partisan Association banner — all but bereft of support from the members of the 2014 NPA campaign team, and party President at the time, Peter Armstrong — and willed herself onto Council with a vitality, urgency and strength of purpose that so enraptured Vancouver’s voting electorate that she garnered an amazing 63,134 votes, placing a high fourth place at the polls, in her first run for elected office as a Vancouver City Councillor.

Never one to hide her light under a bushel, it wasn’t very long into her first term of office at Vancouver City Hall that Ms. De Genova came head-to-head with the seven-headed monster that was — back in the day, only 7 short years ago — Vision Vancouver, identifying early on the challenge with which she was confronted, most particularly in the form of Vision Councillor Andrea Reimer, whose every utterance directed towards Councillor De Genova dripped with a contemptuous condescension  that all but demanded a response from Council novice Melissa De Genova.

To say that Melissa gave as good as she got is to understate the matter.

Alas, that was then, and this is now.

During the current term of office Councillor De Genova has transformed from a fighter into a pussy cat, a ‘can barely stand on her legs’ kitten.

These past three years, what has happened to Vancouver resident champion and fighter for all that is right and good, challenger of her opposition colleagues, and ruthless yet still humane Council combatant, a woman who takes no truck nor holds any prisoners, the Melissa De Genova who calls out dissembling, self-righteous virtue signaling nonsense when one opposition Councillor or other makes a statement so ludicrous and offside that it all but demands a response from Vancouver’s warrior City Councillor.

“Melissa, Melissa, come out, come out from wherever you’ve been hiding! We need you! Please, be our champion once again.”

VanRamblings wrote yesterday that only two current City Councillors are assured re-election in 2022. We’d like to add Melissa De Genova to that list — but first she’s going to have to rekindle the fire in her belly that was once her electoral raison d’être, and re-emerge as the fighter for all that is right and good, and be seen to do so, if she is to emerge victorious in the 2022 election.

And, yes, VanRamblings is well aware of that damnable Code of Conduct that has stifled debate around the Council table this term of office at City Hall, with Green Councillor Adriane Carr the chief enforcer of this “we must play nice, never give the appearance of impugning the integrity of a staff person, presenter to Council, or woebegone citizen, because nicey-nicey is the order of the day on this current term Vancouver City Council — and, quite simply, I won’t have it any other way!”

What does VanRamblings hope wlll be Councillor Melissa De Genova’s response?