We’re having an election here in Vancouver on Nov. 19th. We have four parties in contention: the NPA, generally regarded as representing the interests of the West-siders who live in big houses, and sympathetic to the provincial government as long as it’s right-wing, which it currently is. Then there’s COPE, usually seen as a bunch of old-fashioned Lefties, the Greens, and a new thingie called Vision Vancouver. There are two candidates for mayor, the NPA’s Sam Sullivan and Jim Green from Vision. What happened was, we had a pretty good mayor called Larry Campbell, who ran on the COPE ticket but was never very comfy with its leftward fringes. He retired and COPE split, spinning off Vision; and Jim Green, who was kind of Larry’s sidekick, is running on that ticket. It’s unclear whether Vision is anything more than a one-time platform for Green; but COPE and Vision and the Greens are co-operating, somewhat. This is kind of a cheery election; both Sullivan and Green look like pretty plausible candidates for mayor, and they’re being reasonably civilized about it; their attacks on each other seem pretty well fact-based. I think we’ll do OK, whoever wins.
