The aftermath in Vancouver

Divisions that developed on the last council and poor campaign financing led to a mayoral victory for Sam Sullivan, a split council and the implosion of Vancouver’s ruling party, says COPE’s sole remaining councillor.

Sam Sullivan, with 61,543 votes, beat Vision Vancouver’s Jim Green by 3747 ballots in the tightly contested race for the mayor’s seat and will head a council split evenly between the Non-Partisan Association and the left of centre parties Vision Vancouver and the Coalition of Progressive Electors.

As a victorious Sam Sullivan wheeled his way through a crowd of cheering NPA supporters packed into the Hotel Vancouver’s Columbia ballroom, a clearly dejected David Cadman lingered with his party’s campaign manager and a friend in the foyer outside the hall.

COPE’s surviving councillor said the overwhelming losses by his party were due in part to the split between Vision and COPE as well as poor campaign financing.

“Anything you do united is better than divided,” Cadman said. He said he was happy to be returning to council alongside the four Vision Vancouver councillors and said together with the addition of new NPA faces council would work together to the benefit of Vancouver.

Cadman was incredulous that none of Vancouver’s major media outlets covered the ruling-party’s nomination meeting. He said the media covered it as a mayoral election, largely ignoring COPE in the process and leading to the party’s drubbing at the polls.

COPE incumbents Fred Bass, Tim Louis, Anne Roberts and Ellen Woodsworth all lost their seats. Raymond Louie and Tim Stevenson, both incumbents, will return to council together with their Vision colleagues George Chow and Heather Deal.

Money was another factor in the party’s poor performance, Cadman said. He said many thought COPE, heavily in debt following Vision’s breaking away from the party earlier in the year, would have a hard time running a campaign.

“We’re in an era where money makes a difference in politics,” he said, noting that COPE had money for the last election and won.

The NPA’s Peter Ladner credited his party’s success, in part, to the political infighting on council that lead to the split between Vision and COPE, and said it hurt COPE the most.

“I think they’ve killed themselves,” Ladner said.

He said the results show the popularity of Larry Campbell and Jim Green clearly wasn’t as strong as Vision Vancouver thought it was. Beyond the political infighting, he said there was a sense that Vancouver voters were generally dissatisfied with the direction the city was heading.

Ladner said the race was too close to call throughout the entire campaign and though he had been hoping for an NPA majority on council he was satisfied with the split.

“[Council’s] going to be a lot more fun than the last three years,” Ladner said. Suzanne Anton, Elizabeth Ball, Kim Capri, and B.C. Lee were the other NPA candidates elected to council.

How the COPE/Vision split factored into the overall results would have to be analyzed, said Vision's Raymond Louie. But, he said going forward he hopes partisan issues won't get in the way of council making the right decisions for the people of Vancouver and that future planning on the part of Vision could include overtures to reintegrating COPE, but that it was too early to speculate on.