Civic left hoping for deja vu

By Mike Howell-Staff writer

COPE Coun. Anne Roberts hopes the results of the 1990 municipal election will be repeated now that the party has agreed not to run a full slate against Vision Vancouver.

In 1990, Jim Green ran for mayor with COPE. This fall, he is running as the mayoral candidate for Vision Vancouver. Though Green lost the 1990 election to Gordon Campbell, Roberts noted that all five COPE council candidates, including Libby Davies, Bruce Eriksen and Harry Rankin, won seats.

"So, you know, there's a certain successful strategy there," said Roberts, who is seeking re-election Nov. 19 along with COPE councillors Tim Louis, David Cadman, Fred Bass and Ellen Woodsworth.

The 1990 campaign saw five COPE council candidates run on a unity slate with five Civic NDP candidates, who were all defeated. They included Mel Lehan, David Levi and Merrilee Robson.

COPE will run five council candidates this fall, but this time they will be alongside five Vision candidates. A majority of COPE members agreed at a meeting Saturday not to run a mayoral candidate against Green.

Even so, Woodsworth maintained "a slate hasn't been arranged," noting that running a joint campaign, which would include fundraising, wasn't discussed at Saturday's meeting.

"At this point, there's two separate organizations and we will continue discussions. Nobody wants to roll back the clock, we want to go forward and win the next election as a progressive-left coalition."

Green's Vision Vancouver, the new party that broke away from COPE, includes former COPE councillors Raymond Louie and Tim Stevenson. The party will soon name three other council candidates.

Vision will not run candidates for school board or parks board because it does not want to split the vote with COPE, which is running candidates for the two boards.

Josh Coles, chairman of Vision Vancouver, said the party is glad COPE will not run candidates against Vision. Both sides still have to work out whether they'll run a joint campaign, Coles added.

"Generally, the feeling around the room [with the executive] is that it's good news, we just have to figure out a way to handle it," he said Monday. "We have some questions outstanding as to what it all means. We'll figure it out this week."

Cadman, who was considering a run for mayor with COPE, said he decided against his bid because he didn't want to split the vote with Green and help cause an NPA victory.

"What I had wanted was a contest within COPE for the mayoralty candidate," Cadman said. "Jim Green, Raymond Louie and Tim Stevenson-by quitting COPE and leaving us with a debt-basically left us with no option if we did not want to divide the progressive vote."

Cadman said he didn't know the extent of the debt which COPE racked up in the 2002 campaign.

Woodsworth agreed with Cadman that a COPE mayoral candidate would split the vote. She said former deputy premier Christy Clark's bid for the NPA mayoral nomination helped unite COPE and Vision.

"We're very concerned that she could possibly win the nomination and win the election if we don't unite behind one strong candidate," she said.

When COPE suggested Green as its mayoral candidate in 1990, the Civic NDP initially called Green "too radical, too narrow, too Downtown Eastside Residents Association-ish," according to a COPE history book titled COPE: Working for Vancouver, 1968 to 1993.

Green was elected as a city councillor in the 2002 COPE landslide. The so-called "radical" voted for the 2010 Olympics, the RAV line and slot machines in the city.

COPE's nomination meeting is Sept. 25, the day after the NPA selects it mayoral candidate and the rest of its picks for council, school board, and parks board.

published on 09/14/2005