A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To the Voting Booth
It can be a bit humbling, learning just where one fits on a scale of the city’s affections, in my case somewhere just below the barn-burning Tim Louis (Love you Tim!), just higher than a newbie with a bit of baggage. Even tougher to contemplate the lack of enthusiasm from a party I’ve worked hard to help rebuild over the past three years.
C’est la vie.
But I wasn’t the only casualty. How is it possible we’ve spent more than $2.5 million to go from the lowest-ever representation on council to our second-lowest representation ever?
There were only seven incumbents running for ten spots and one didn’t make it, leaving four spots open. Given that the NPA was the only viable alternative, we should have taken at least three council seats, if not four.
Especially after one of the worst riots in the city’s history, a quarter billion dollars in losses at the Olympic Village, and neighborhoods across the city up in arms. Everyone agreed council needed re-balancing.
Instead, thanks to our tone-deaf campaign, Vision emerged energized and refreshed, happily ensconced as the new ruling party, vindicated by an overwhelming majority on council and a resounding mandate for their policies.
Voters form habits, just as donors do. While the NPA yet again focuses inward, the other side will spend the next three years reinforcing relationships across the city, cementing themselves in place as de facto power brokers for years to come.
Instead of understanding our history and using the election to heal a broken party once and for all, bridging old wounds and uniting everyone around a centrist campaign that would have established a real beach-head for NPA renewal, those in charge decided to double down on the culture wars that have bedeviled the NPA for years now.
The result is that instead of dividing the electorate they succeeded in alienated the environmental wing of our party along with the centrist voters we all needed to win.
I included a parting shot at the election campaign in a Thank You letter to supporters I published on my website homepage last Sunday. Some mistook my comment as a criticism of Suzanne Anton, our Mayoral candidate, when it was nothing of the kind. I’ve spent three years working hard to help Suzanne.
My words were aimed specifically at the central campaign and those that ran it. They’re all big boys, they can take the criticism and I’ve discussed these concerns with them before.
Ultimately I lost the election because I was unable to attract enough support to generate the donations and volunteers and votes needed to win. I take full responsibility for that failure, which has left us struggling to hang onto our home and a campaign in debt.
But if nothing else happened on the way to the ballot box, I’ve earned my right to an opinion. Instead of participating in the decision-making process, I’m left to observe that process from the outside and this post will be the first in a series of articles about what I think happened and why.
Sean, from sitting on the outside edge of this last election I saw something else – out-and-out voter apathy in Vancouver.
While I commend all the people who got out there and voted; they exercised their legal right and they do not need to be championed.
Really, how can a “world class city” and its past and current City Council possibly take anything positive out of such a small percentage of its voting public actually getting out to vote to elect the same old same old with some new faces?
I just think it is pathetic that a current Mayor of world-class city can let a riot happen and get re-elected.
Sean, you ran a great campaign; you got out there; and you did your best!
Let’s get busy and create some really sustainable cultural endeavors that we can all sustain ourselves on; and move forward away from debt, hanging on and getting staff paid.
I am up for it!
Susan
PS: Looking forward to the next articles about what really happened and why!
I’m not a big fan of Gregor Robertson (I didn’t vote for him), but these references to the hockey riot (by NPA candidates and the previous commenter) irritate me a bit. If Robertson was responsible for the 2011 hockey riot, it seems to me that Phillip Owen should have been held responsible for the 2004 hockey riot, but I certainly didn’t then, or now, take that view, nor would I expect anyone in the NPA to do so, in which case, perhaps, these attacks on Robertson for the riot seem a bit hypocritical. It seems to me that to be going on about the hockey riot is morally, if not literally, equivalent to “doubl[ing] down on the culture wars”.
Sean, to your credit I did not see you dressed up in a chicken suit, or standing on a bike lane with a sign that says “stop the war on cars”, and because of that, along with endorsements from some people I respect, I considered voting for you. I wrote you a letter, to try to get a better sense of your positions, but I did not receive a response. Despite this, I was still considering supporting you. When I got to the ballot box, however, I crossed you off my list at the last minute and replaced you with an independent candidate (I can’t even remember which one now).
The reason that I crossed you out? I felt uneasy. Yes, you have a habit of saying things that sound on the surface to be more thoughful and critically attuned than some of those ideologically and culturally (and just plain idiotic) opportunistic things that were originating from (as you say) NPA central command. (You defend Anton in this regard as not being of that ilk, but she looked like a pretty enthusiastic parroter of those lines, from my perspective. One would hope that a mayor would have the ability and assertiveness to think for herself rather than spout whatever script is handed to her by the political consultants). Examples? Your blog piece on April 8 about chickens. It was a very nice piece of memoir that, as someone with chicken raising in his distant past (and, now, once again, his present) I appreciated.
Unfortunately, the moment was spoiled slightly by concluding the piece to try to score cheap political points based on the extremely insigifigant fact of the city having provided for shelter for abandoned chickens, and that put a faint question about your sincerity in the back of my mind. Another example is your safe streets proposal. On its own, one could forgive the slight – apparent – emphasis on the ‘bike problem’ whike failing to refer equally to existing ‘car problems’, for you certainly have the ability to sound reasonable and non-reactionary. Unfortunately, your proposal’s disproportionate references to bikes rings a faint alarm in the ear of a reader, and hearing it in conjunction with the hysterical voices coming from the central office of your own party amplified that warning bell in my inner ear. It seemed not that you were saying *different* things than the central campaign or some other candidates, but that you were saying the same things in more reasonable-sounding language. Aesthetically less alarming, but practically still of concern.
I agree with you – the NPA’s campaign certainly impaired your efforts to get elected, and that’s unfortunate. Speaking only for my vote, I’m certain that losing it was influenced by your unfortunate association with the NPA campaign. However, I like to think that I am a pretty non-rigid voter, and I am affiliated with no parties these days (I am a former member and campaign worker in the NPA). I am willing to vote for any candidate that makes me feel confident that he or she is sincere, open-minded, and equipped and willing to consider alternative points of view and then act accordingly, regardless of ideology, personal prejuduce, or world view. In the end, it was what I perceived as the inconsistencies between your positions and the apparent subtexts contained within them that made me move my vote at the last minute.
Should you choose to run again in future, I will once again consider supporting you. I will, though, be looking for some signs of change from this campaign – not just in how your party campaigns, but in how your personal campaign differs from this one.
With due respect to your introspection Sean… You know I’ve always been more of a numbers guy and I prefer to look at where support was before I start musing about why a whole campaign didn’t achieve all it’s goals.
If you look at the two NPA candidates who were elected and compare the elections data to how you did, you begin to see a little bit of trend.
In polls where you got more votes than Ball or Affleck, you took around an average 22% of the popular vote
In polls where you got close to Ball and Affleck (within 50 votes) you took an average of 25% of the popular vote
In polls where you weren’t even close to Ball and Affleck you took an average of 32% of the popular vote.
So what does that mean? Where you did well, the NPA did not. Where you did poorly, the NPA did very well.
To me that says you were not able to connect well with voters who would be considered the NPA’s base. No offence to you. You know I think the world of you and I REALLY had fun working with you. But when running for office, you must seek out your base and ensure they vote for you. Vision’s machine does this very well.
I admire your efforts to break into the west end and downtown vote, but we knew before we started that voter turnout is horrifically low in those polls. That doesn’t mean it should be ignored, but parties should go where the votes are when they are trying to unseat a strong incumbent.
I can tell you one thing that was successful… and I think the playful, headline getting campaign can take credit for this. This election had a much higher voter turnout than last time. I think we saw interest spike not only because of Occupy, but because we actually made people think about the Vancouver they wanted. Politics does not have to be boring, it can be colourful. I’ve heard the campaign described as negative, but that’s how Vision framed the debate and many of our candidates allowed them to do that. How can a chicken suit be negative? It’s fun.
In any case, I hope you will continue to support the NPA next time around. I think in the next three years the public will begin to see Vision not as green saviours but as mean spirited opportunists who have no business running a world-class city like Vancouver.
Sean: The big picture on the election is pretty simple. The Vision Party operates as a full time, well funded left wing machine in the NDP tradition. Vision has been identifying their vote for over 4 years and started the Campaign with 45,000 and ended with about 60,000 identified voters . Vision then got 1,600 people working to get the vote out on election day. In an election where few people actually vote, this strategy worked well as only 18% of the eloctorate was needed to elect this left wing crowd. By contrast , the NPA has simply been a committee of people who deeply care about Vancouver who in turn try to find good candidates once every three years who are willing to serve their City. The Vision Party started to prepare for this recent election 3 years ago whereas the NPA started preparing just a few months ago. Visions lead on identified voters and their massive number of good old CUPE Union “volunteers” on election day could not be overcome in a short time frame. At this point, the past is only for historical reference and learning. The only real question going forward is whether the NPA should change direction and become a competitive full time political Party or remain simply as a nominating committee. Respectfully, Rob Macdonald
I’m just one voter, but here’s my take. Last election I voted for a mix of parties – mostly Vision, but with a few COPE and NPA candidates including you and Michael Geller. This election I wanted to vote for you again, but a few things turned me off.
I was disappointed with your position on bike registration – we’ve discussed it on twitter, so there’s nothing else to say here. I still would have voted for you if it wasn’t for the general hate for all things green coming out of the NPA central campaign. If the NPA would have done well, even if they only won a few more seats, the media would have portrayed it as a backlash against Vancouver’s green agenda – bike lanes, Greenest City, urban agriculture. As a long-time reader of your blog, I know this isn’t indicative of your opinions, but you were running as an NPA candidate.
Like Paul, I’ve spent a lot of time data mining the election results. He’s right. Your vote results diverged significantly from the rest of the NPA – you didn’t appeal as strongly to the NPA base, but appealed to ‘progressives’ outside your party. Unfortunately, with such a divisive central campaign, people outside your party are going to be less likely to vote for you. You’re probably right in blaming the central campaign for your poor showing, but that’s probably not true for your running mates. Maybe you picked the wrong party to run for.
I would love to see the NPA listen more to people like Gordon Price and Peter Ladner – people I respect. That said, their opinions seem closely aligned with Vision’s these days.
Oh Veg… Don’t be putting words in my mouth. Sean had plenty of appeal to the NPAs base, for sure. i would suspect he spent too much of his time focused on one area. I’m sure there’s room in the NPA for moderates like Sean. A lot more room than in their oppositions slate.
@Paul T – Your words: “To me that says you were not able to connect well with voters who would be considered the NPA’s base”.
I guess you disagree that Sean’s lower vote totals from the NPA base (I think we agree on that much) was caused by an inherent lack of “appeal”, but instead from lack of “connection”. Go ahead and replace “appeal” with “connect” in my post. My opinion is still the same.
@PaulT: “[...]too much of his time focused on one area.” The idea that Sean lost votes because he spent too much time focussed on one area sounds attractive, but I have a hard time imagining that that was significant factor. Before or during the election, not one single candidate knocked on my door; only four brochures were dropped at my house; I saw not one candidate mainstreeting in my neighbourhood (or anywhere else I happened to be wandering around town). Candidates spend so little time in contact with actual voters, over all, that I don’t believe that a candidate’s actual voter-meeting activities amount to much of anything, statistically. Rather – unfortunately – our elections are largely fought in the media, either in advertising, news stories, or editorial content, and because of that and the absurd number of names on the ballot that most voters can’t possibly be educated about the candidates. The result is largely slate voting and voting by semi-rational perception.
One wonders why Sean did not do so well with NPA voters. Could it be, in part, homophobia? This may well *not* be a factor at all, and I hope it was not, but I was an NPA campaign worker when Gordon Price first ran and I remember very well the nudge-nudge, wink-wink, whispering taking place at campaign events and even at the election night victory party. I have not analysed Price’s vote counts compared to his running mates and, of course, many years have passed and I would hope that the NPA base has modernised its thinking a bit in that regard, but an interesting possibility nonetheless. Sean’s opposition to casinos may also be a factor. In my experience, NPA supporters are often unenthusiastic about people the perceive to be “outsiders” in some way, and perhaps they perceived Sean’s opposition as a sign of some sort of traitorousness to the free-enterprise cause somehow, even if at a sort of semi-conscious level.
I think canadianveg is right, and it’s something I’ve already been contemplating. If Sean wants to run again, he should dump the NPA, and either form a TEAM-like coalition with people like Sandy Garossino and negotiate a loose Vision cooperation for ballot space (or just run for Vision and try to influence from the inside). The NPA’s base is significantly old-moneyed people of higher median age, not a particularly growing demographic. Unless they show any signs of trying to speak to other communities, I can’t see them taking down Vision in the near future. And judging by rob macdonald’s comment above, they won’t do that if they’re still stuck in the mode of trying to attack their opponents with mid-20th century red-scare tactics.