#munipoli Matters ISSUE 27 - The Wild West of Vancouver politics
Also, interesting updates from other elections around the world
Welcome to another issue of #munipoli Matters, where I delved into and breakdown the often under-reported area of municipal politics and the elections unfolding across Canada and beyond.
This week we are following up on how the local campaign in the West Coast’s most prominent city is shaping up.
The latest in Vancouver
In 2018, Vision Vancouver went from governing the city with a clear majority to being wiped off the map. Another progressive party, COPE, also went from holding the mayor’s seat from 2002 to 2005 before also subsequently losing their influence.
This time around COPE is hoping to be the ones that supplant Vision as THE progressive municipal party in Vancouver. While incumbent Councillor Jean Swanson, elected under the COPE banner, is not running for mayor herself, she is leading a slate of candidates on the ballot.
Meanwhile, the Non Partisan Association (NPA) is losing its grip as the dominant centrist, or centre-right, municipal party in the city. Three former NPA councillors, who left that party to sit as independents, have now joined mayoral candidate Ken Sim’s A Better City (ABC).
Those councillors are Sarah Kirby-Yung, Lisa Dominato and Rebecca Bligh. Bligh left the NPA in 2019 while Dominato and Kirby-Yung left in 2021 over the NPA board’s decision to run John Coupar as mayor.
Sim ran for mayor under the NPA banner in 2018, losing narrowly to current Mayor Kennedy Stewart. Stewart, a former NDP MP from Burnaby South who won the mayor’s seat as an Independent, also started his own progressive party, called Forward Together.
Adding to the mix of Progress Vancouver’s Mark Marissen and TEAM for a Livable Vancouver led by another former NPA councillor, Colleen Hardwick, this race is really offering a gamut of choices from all sides of the political spectrum.
In other news
Kincardine, ON: The thing about small town councils is sometimes the juiciest stories come out of the places where people pay the least attention. During a meeting of the council for this small municipality located on the shores of Lake Huron, Councillor David Cuyler allegedly said to a female colleague, “You’re a f****n c***”.
"There's no situation where it's OK for a man to stay silent when someone uses that word against a woman," a resident responded to CBC. "(Mayor Gerry Glover) just reminded councillors to make sure their mics are off and I don't think that's an appropriate response,” commenting on Glover’s handling of the situation.
Langley Township, BC: Mayor Larry Froese is retiring after three terms in office as mayor in this Lower Mainland municipality from the job he’s held since 2011. Froese cites bringing Skytrain to Langley and the building of a new community centre as key accomplishments during his tenure in office.
Waterloo, ON: There certainly is going to be a seismic shift on Waterloo City Council come this fall. Mayor Dave Jaworsky is not running again and Shannon Weber, an instructor at Conestoga College teaching the Strategic Global Business Management Graduate Program, is the first declared candidate to replace him.
Three city councillors have also said they will not be running again: Ward 3 Councillor Angela Vieth, Ward 6 Councillor Jeff Henry and Ward 7 Councillor Tenille Bonoguore, who leaves after one term. There are also open positions at Waterloo Regional Council as well, as Karl Kiefer (representing Cambridge) and Elizabeth Clarke (representing Kitchener) are also not re-offering.
Winnipeg, MB: The mayoral race to succeed incumbent Brian Bowman in the October 2022 election is shaping up, as Councillor Scott Gillingham resigned from his powerful post as Finance Chair of the city’s executive policy committee.
The EPC is equivalent to a cabinet governing Winnipeg; expect Gillingham to launch his campaign for mayor soon, joining Shaun Loney and fellow Councillor John Orlikow in the field. Councillor Markus Chambers, whose name was also bandied about running for mayor, is now backing Gillingham.
Sault Ste Marie, ON: Mayor Christian Provenzano confirmed he will not be seeking another term as mayor and Councillor Matthew Shoemaker became the first declared candidate for the city’s top job.
Shoemaker, 33, is a lawyer who got his law degree from the University of Ottawa and also has a master’s from Osgoode Hall. He said he will wait until after the June 2 provincial election to release a full platform.
Beyond our borders
Milwaukee, Wisconsin: A special election for mayor took place after former incumbent Tom Barrett accepted an ambassadorial post from the Biden administration. On February 15, acting mayor Cavalier Johnson and former councilman Bob Donovan advanced to the April 5 runoff.
Johnson, who has been a councilman since 2016, won the runoff with 72% of the vote, making him the first African American elected mayor of Milwaukee, and the second black mayor of the city after Marvin Pratt, who served as acting mayor for a few months in 2004 before losing to Barrett.
Chicago, Illinois: Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who won the 2019 election in a landslide with 73% of the vote, is facing significant challengers in the wake of unpopular policy decisions, such as a vaccine mandate for city employees.
Former candidate and Chicago millionaire businessman Willie Wilson is seen as someone who can siphon a significant portion of the African American vote in next year’s mayoral election in the Windy City. Wilson has also run for governor, mayor and even President of the United States.
There are other candidates, such as Alderman Raymond Lopez and Union president John Catanzara. Current US Congressman Mike Quigley has set up an exploratory committee.
France: During the April 10 French presidential election’s first round, current President Emmanuel Macron and right wing National Rally leader Marine Le Pen advanced to the runoff on April 24. But I just wanted to point out that Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, running as the Socialist Paryt’s nominee, barely got 1% of the vote.
This is a far cry from when the Socialists were one of France’s main political parties; they weren’t even the main left wing option this time: Jean-Luc Melenchon, who contested for the presidency in 2017, came in third under the banner of a left wing populist party named La France Insoumise.
Macron’s LREM is essentially a “third way” centrist party consisting of both elements from left and right. Le Pen’s National Rally, formerly known as the National Front founded by her controversial father Jean-Marie Le Pen, has been attempting to shed some of the party’s radical policies on immigration and to focus more on affordability.
Going back to Hidalgo, being Mayor of Paris would be a boost to running for president in the past. Former mayor Jacques Chirac parlayed that into the presidency for two terms, but it seems even being mayor of one of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities and the epicentre of her country’s political and cultural life isn’t enough these days.
South Korea: South Korean presidents serve one five year term, so every election results in a new president. But the recent one in March was one of the closest contests ever, with conservative Yoon Suk-yeol edging out Democratic Party nominee Lee Jae-myung by only about one percentage point.
Lee is a former governor of Gyeonggi Province, which surrounds Seoul and contains many of the surrounding suburbs, and he was also a former mayor of one of those satellites around the capital city. Yoon, however, has a more colourful background.
A former chief prosecutor who was involved in convicting two former South Korean presidents, Yoon ran on a platform that was heavily seen as anti-feminist (one of his promises was to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality) who also has obtained the moniker of “the K (Korean) Trump”.
Turkmenistan: Finally, to mark off the conclusion of this go-around-the-world, we turn to this isolated former Soviet republic where an “election” (I use that term loosely since many international observers agree the vote was neither free nor fair) was held to replace authoritarian president Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow.
Berdimuhamedow is clearly one of the most bizarre world leaders in the modern era, judging by this profile done on him by comedian John Oliver. No surprise, though, that the 15 year strongman was replaced, in a blatant display of nepotism, by his son Serdar Berdimuhamedow, who “won” with 73% of the vote.
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