NPA serves up old-time fare

By Allen Garr

You could find more cleavage at the B.C. Federation of Labour Convention, and Asian faces were relegated to a few tables off in a corner. Most of the crowd who filled the ballroom of the Fairmont Waterfront Hotel to chow down on mushroom soup and steak, all for the greater glory of the NPA, were aging white men in suits.

It was, with a few notable exceptions, the same old, same old and looked more like a '50s Rotary Club luncheon than a political movement for a new millennium. Even though some of the vcaTEAM folks have returned to the fold after their brief and unsuccessful fling with independence, the gang that lost power in Vancouver's last civic election is still some distance from recovery.

Most of big name developers who turned up to help bankroll Mayor Larry Campbell's party the week before were not here. Instead we got the second ranked crowd, along with lawyers and realtors who are no less capable of writing out cheques- $160 plus tax per plate- to start building the million dollar-plus war chest that's needed for the next campaign.

There was some sense that the torch was being passed to another generation-literally. The chair of the dinner, Andrew Graham, was there with his stepdad and longtime NPA bag person Marty Zlotnik. Graham's university buddy and NPA president Paul Barbeau, is former mayor Philip Owen's nephew. Matt Taylor, on the NPA election readiness committee, is married to Owen's niece. We will wait to see if they are not cut from the same conservative cloth.

It didn't take a CSI team to find evidence of the explosion that ripped this party apart a few years ago. Former parks board commissioner Alan Featherstonhaugh was there on someone else's ticket. He still remembers the headline-making shot he took at Jennifer Clarke when Owen got dumped by the NPA and she picked up the nomination for mayor. "A coup d'etat," he called it. And it stuck. Clarke, apparently oblivious to his presence, was across the sea of suits working the tables, intent on winning the Liberal nomination for Vancouver-Langara in the upcoming provincial election.

As much as these guys would like the world to think they are getting ready, they are actually consumed by what their enemy is doing. NPA isn't going anywhere unless COPE continues to fall apart.

That was obvious by the speeches given that evening by NPA councillors Peter Ladner and Sam Sullivan. They have been nurtured for the past two years on the bloody battle that has divided what once was the COPE caucus. Now they nurture the notion that Larry Campbell is planning to jump ship.

They have no more evidence than what you first read here. There is a fundraiser later this month and that money will be held back from COPE by Campbell's camp-mate Raymond Louie to wage an independent battle next November. There is also the fact that Larry continues to tell anyone who will listen, privately of course, that he would rather eat worms than run on the same ticket as Tim Louis.

Ladner caught perfectly Campbell's political gyrations and his bullying manner of dealing with people with the old college cheers: "Lean to the left. Lean to the right. Stand up. Sit down. Fight. Fight. Fight."

But it is debatable whether that or reminders that COPE blew a million taxpayers' bucks on its flaccid attempt to bring in a ward system will have any sway with voters. Nobody cuts ribbons or kisses babies like Larry.

That, in the end, may be all that matters unless, of course, the mayor ends up in a bloody brawl as he tears his party apart in a move, as Ladner puts it, "to save his own skin."

As things stand now, for the NPA suits there is only hope and still time to update their image. Maybe some vegan treats at the next dinner.

posted on 12/06/2004