This past Friday at City Hall, the City Clerk and Chief Electoral drew names out of a spinning barrel to determine the order of candidates on the newly adopted randomized ballot, as it applies to the 2018 Mayor’s, City Council, School Board and Park Board Vancouver municipal election races.

The person you see at the top of today’s column is Jason Lamarche, a 2011 Vancouver Non-Partisan Association candidate for City Council who drew the ire and indignation of voters, women voters in particular, for a “Date Matrix” blog post that he posted prior to the outset of the civic election, that rated the women in his life based on 15 categories, including skills in the bedroom and pulchritude, a humourous endeavour he told his party, his NPA colleagues and the press, when asked about it. No one bought it.
Despairingly, for a beleaguered Mr. Lamarche, he came in dead last among his NPA peers on election night. Too bad, so sad. No political career for him.
Why is VanRamblings boring you with details of Mr. Lamarche’s sordid and inglorious history in Vancouver civic election politics?
Well, dear and constant reader: the aforementioned Mr. Lamarche’s name was drawn first in the Mayoral draw sweepstakes, which means that his name — despite his none-too-flattering Hitler moustache, and menacing, vacant-eyed serial killer look — will appear atop the Mayoral electoral ballot, a prospect that is guaranteed to garner him more votes than would otherwise have been the case were the ballot alphabetical, as per usual.

Mr. Lamarche may be laughing. The rest of us, particularly those of us who care about democracy, and the electoral process, not so much.

BREMNER, Hector. Yes Vancouver’s Hector Bremner, currently polling at 5%, according to internal party polling conducted by various of the campaigns, enmashed as he is in scandal, arising from an $85,000 expenditure by developer Peter Wall on billboards extolling Mr. Bremner’s “affordable housing plan”, and his purported association with a dark, mud-slinging third party electoral group called Vancouverites for Affordable Housing. Given the various controversies in which he’s found himself involved and the consequent bad press, and given the poor reception he’s received at various of the Mayoral election townhalls, Mr. Bremner’s nascent Mayoral campaign would appear to be over, even before it was given an opportunity to get itself effectively underway.

CHEN, David. The Mayoral candidate for an under-the-radar novice political party, Pro Vancouver, Mr. Chen’s standing in the polls has recently plummeted to 3% given his confusing message and inept candidates (save, perhaps, Raza Mirza), which means he’s no longer a factor in the 2018 Vancouver municipal election race. We will afford Mr. Chen the attention his campaign deserves: which is exactly none.

HARDING, Fred. The Mayoral candidate for Jesse Johl’s perennial far right-of-centre civic party, Vancouver First. Mr. Harding, for all his bluster, is also polling at 3%, which means he’s not a factor in the 2018 Vancouver Mayoral race, and therefore undeserving of our attention.

SIM, Ken. The novice Mayoral candidate with the powerhouse right-of-centre Vancouver Non-Partisan Association legacy civic party, which held power at City Hall for all but 17 years since the party’s founding in 1937 “to fight the socialist hordes.” The NPA is a well-oiled, well-funded political machine — even given the restrictive electoral finance legislation brought in by our current New Democrat provincial government. The NPA is currently polling at 26% according to insider party polling — less than would otherwise be the case were other right-of centre parties (Coalition Vancouver, Vancouver First, Yes Vancouver) not muddying the right-of-centre waters. The NPA is running nine candidates for Council, the party’s two best (and most deserving) prospects: current Park Board Commissioner Sarah Kirby-Yung, who is a must-elect, and all things being equal, the indefatigable Melissa De Genova — perhaps the most tireless and effective campaigner in the city (Ms. De Genova was telling VanRamblings on Sunday that for her the most difficult part of this year’s campaign for office is being away from her baby).

Maybe prospects for the spoiler right-of-centre parties will fade, and the right-wing will get behind Ken Sim & his Vancouver Non-Partisan Association. We think prospects for that outcome are slim, at best. But you never know — Ken Sim could sweep into office, along with a coterie of his Council candidates, and …

STEWART, Kennedy. The smart money is on Kennedy Stewart, the recently retired NDP Member of Parliament and 15-year resident of Vancouver, to become Vancouver’s next Mayor. When Vision Vancouver Mayoral candidate Ian Campbell pulled out of the race, the lion’s share of his support went to the affable and nominally left-of-centre Mr. Stewart.

Labour is fully on board with Kennedy Stewart’s candidacy — that means all 50,000+ Union members who live in the city of Vancouver — as are significant factions within both the provincial and federal New Democratic Party. Mr. Stewart’s campaign is well-funded, and his campaign machine well-oiled. In the main, Vancouver voters tend to vote progressive. Mr. Stewart appears far from scary in his various campaign pronouncements, and if voters are looking for a reliable stand-up guy who is the antithesis of Donald Trump, or the Trump-like conservatives running for office with the right-of-centre parties, Kennedy Stewart is definitely their guy.

For VanRamblings, the best part of Mr. Kennedy’s campaign for the Mayoralty is his loud & proud willingness to build a team of progressives around him: for instance, OneCity Vancouver’s must, must-elect City Council candidate, Christine Boyle (who we love — based solely on her platform, and utterly winning presentation of self), by far our favourite candidate for civic office in the 2018 Vancouver municipal campaign, and someone we absolutely guarantee you will become smitten with (smitten being the operative word of the day, which is the word anyone who speaks of the accomplished Ms. Boyle employs, as the progressive, utterly transcendent difference-maker candidate in this election, who every other civic candidate is politically smitten with, as well).

Christine Boyle who won’t let you down. We absolutely guarantee it.

Now, Kennedy Stewart and Christine Boyle are going to need a team around them if they’re going to effectively and pro-actively address the issues of importance to all of us: affordable housing, responsible environmental stewardship, transit, and the social issues of importance: women’s equity, the living wage campaign, reconciliation with our indigenous peoples, the important issues surrounding our gender variant and LGBTQ2+ communities, fighting poverty and ensuring all the children in our city are well-fed when they start their school day.

Who are the progressive candidates who comprise Kennedy Stewart and Christine Boyle’s team of action-oriented community activists?

• Pete Fry, the Green Party. Another must, must, must-elect, the city builder, the neighbourhood activist, the focused and friendly guy who’ll make a difference for the better in your life. Again, we absolutely guarantee it. Anyone and everyone who knows Pete, who has worked with Pete, is just as smitten with him as they are with Christine Boyle. Because folks like Christine and Pete, they’re utterly selfless and absolutely brilliant people, community activists who mean to make a difference, and will make a difference, in your life and your family’s life, and the lives of all your neighbours and friends and colleagues. Christine and Pete are civic treasures, once-in-a-lifetime folks who if we’re very, very lucky, and really smart, we’ll elect overwhelmingly to City Council on Saturday, October 20th.

• Derrick O’Keefe. Yep, Christine Boyle and Pete Fry are absolutely in love with Derrick O’Keefe — and why wouldn’t they be? Christine and Pete know that Derrick O’Keefe will become the most beloved, and kinda cantankerous for us, political figure of change for the better in our city since Harry Rankin. You’ve read all this press on the new, beloved socialist candidates (because, you know what, they’re bright and principled and on our side) in the U.S.: New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Seattle’s Kshama Sawant, Tallahassee mayor and Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum, Massachusetts Democrat Ayanna Pressley, Philadelphia’s Elizabeth Fiedler. That’s Derrick O’Keefe, a member of the family and Christine and Pete’s staunch ally.

  Now, Christine, Derrick, Pete and Kennedy are going to need to fill out their slate of change for the better progressives: that means, two-term City Councillor Adriane Carr and her Green Party colleagues Michael Wiebe and David Wong; Christine’s Boyle’s OneCity colleague Brandon Yan, and Derrick’s COPE running mates, Jean Swanson and Anne Roberts. And let’s not forget Vision Vancouver’s Catherine Evans and Heather Deal, two must-elects, whether you believe it or not.

SYLVESTER, SHAUNA. If there were a God in the heavens watching over us, the single most articulate, the single brightest, the only Mayoral candidate with an effective action plan on: affordable housing, transit, climate change, diversity, women’s equity, parks and recreation, the arts, breaking down anomie and isolation in our city, enhancing neighbourhood involvement in determining development and the livability of Vancouver’s distinct communities … well, that’s Shauna Sylvester in spades. Maybe there is a God in the heavens, and she will appear on Sunday, October 14th at Christ Church Cathedral for the pivotal, all-important Cathedral Mayoral debate, and there will emerge such a groundswell of support for Shauna Sylvester as Mayor that on October 20th, she will be carried into office. We certainly hope so.

YOUNG, WAI. A strong campaigner, good on her feet, a compelling verging on charismatic speaker, Ms. Young’s time in Parliament has prepared her we
ll for the exigencies of running for Mayor in the 2018 Vancouver civic election. Running on a platform of cleaning up City Hall, dismantling the bike lanes along West 10th Avenue outside VGH and on the Cambie Street bridge, and moving or eliminating the Adanac bike corridor, and her consultative neighbourhood development plan (“Putting power back in the hands of the people”) has a populist ring to it that probably resonates with many voters — as a consequence, Wai Young is polling at 8%, not enough to become Vancouver’s next Mayor. Coalition Party insiders have told VanRamblings that Ms. Young is counting on NPA Mayoral candidate Ken Sim’s support collapsing the closer we get to election day, thus creating path for her to sweep into office. We’ll see.

The non-alphabetical, randomized Mayoral electoral ballot. 21 names on the ballot. Compared to the 71-name City Council randomized ballot, the Mayoral randomized ballot will be a cakewalk for voters.

You see who the serious candidates are above. Vote for the city you want, vote for the city you need, vote for the city we all need.

Raymond Tomlin

Raymond Tomlin is a veteran journalist and educator who has written frequently on the political realm — municipal, provincial and federal — as well as on cinema, mainstream popular culture, the arts, and technology.

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