XPost: can.politics, van.general   
   From: Panca@nyet.ca   
      
   The Mayor's chair in Vancouver.   
      
   A rightwing candidate won Surrey's chair.  She will be treading in the   
   footsteps of the previous rightwing mayor - who will be running for the Harper   
   Cons in 2015.   
      
   Mayor Gregor Robertson has been surrounded by a sea of rightwing governments,   
   from the Christy Clark rightwing BC 'Liberals', to the North and West shore   
   mayors, to the Surrey mayors.   
   And yet he continues to defy the odds of survival by being a leader who is   
   concerned with the issues of homelessness (he's accomplished huge goals there),   
   to transportation issues (lots and lots of bike lanes), to stopping those   
   companies which would trade the environment and beauty of the west coast for   
   profit.  His next biggest foe is Kinder Morgan - that Texas-based firm which   
   has George W Bush as a financial backer.   He recently found temporary housing   
   for homeless in hotels (that will be demolished sometime soon) in time for the   
   cold weather.   
      
   This man just withstood an assault from a rightwing candidate whose history is   
   being employed with the National Post newspaper (under Conrad Black) in   
   Ontario.   
   And the tactics of that candidate were the same dirty politics and attack ads   
   that most rightwing candidates are known for.   
      
   Greg Robertson - a man and mayor that most cities will envy.   
   _________________________________________________________   
      
   Pete McMartin:   Vancouver Sun columnist November 16, 2014   
      
   Vancouver voters chose party with a 'Vision' for the future   
      
   On going into the Non-Partisan Association’s election night party at the   
   Fairmont Hotel Vancouver -- and as parties go, I’ve had more people in my   
   bathroom -- I could not help but note that outside on the street, bordering   
   either side of the hotel, were bike lanes.   
      
   Look out, reader, there’s a bad metaphor heading your way, and it would be:   
      
   The city’s new landscape was right there at curbside for the NPA and its   
   supporters to read.   
      
   This, they either chose not to do, or if they did, they misread it completely.   
   For this, they got to spend their election night staring into their drinks.   
      
   At the height of the NPA’s evening, which peaked as soon as the first polls   
   came in, there might have been at most 200 to 300 people there. The crowd was   
   largely white, mannerly and older. The mood was . . . what’s the opposite of   
   electrifying? And that was before the results started to come in.   
      
   Down the street at the Wall Centre, Vision Vancouver was holding its election   
   night party, and all one had to do was walk into that big ballroom to be struck   
   by the difference between Vision and the NPA.   
      
   The room was packed. The crowd was remarkably diverse and mostly young. (Vision   
   clearly held the lead in pork pie hats and skinny jeans.) Even before the first   
   results came in, you could feel the energy in the room. It was an energy that   
   felt positive, as if these people were for something rather than against it.   
      
   In a post-election interview that night, losing NPA mayoral candidate Kirk   
   LaPointe made mention of Vision Vancouver’s campaign “machine,” and that   
   Vision   
   had done a better job of getting out its vote.   
      
   But that is missing the point, and deflecting what is the NPA’s biggest   
   problem.   
      
   Vision does have a formidable campaign machine. But machines are only as good   
   as the energy behind them.   
      
   More to the point was LaPointe’s concession speech, in which he characterized   
   Mayor Gregor Robertson’s three-peat as “a signature accomplishment” and   
   that   
   his “commitment to his priorities (was) a real role model for how mayors   
   should   
   operate.”   
      
   Exactly. Robertson has been committed to his priorities. He may have alienated   
   many voters over bike lanes and densification and his Green City agenda, but at   
   least he had an agenda. He had a clear idea of what he wanted Vancouver to be,   
   and that was to be not just a city but an expression of an idea.  That idea was   
   forward-looking, and meant to meet a future dominated by population growth and   
   climate change.  And that is why, I would suggest, that the crowd at the Vision   
   party was so overwhelmingly young.  They were the machine, because they had a   
   big stake in the future, whereas the NPA looked mired in the past.   
      
   I had thought the race was going to be closer, and had even believed LaPointe   
   had a good chance of squeaking in a win if COPE mayoral candidate Meena Wong   
   could steal enough votes from Robertson to make a difference.   
      
   She didn’t.  For all the press she received for her idea of a surtax on empty   
   homes -- an unworkable idea, by the way -- Wong was clearly out of her depth.   
   But by getting almost 17,000 votes, all she succeeded in doing was making   
   LaPointe’s loss look respectably close.   If she hadn’t run, and those COPE   
   voters had drifted toward what for them would have been the more ideologically   
   palatable Vision, there wouldn’t have been talk of it being a close result   
   between Robertson and Lapointe but of it being an ol-fashioned ass-kicking.   
   As it is, COPE was, and will be, a spent force relegated to the status of   
   political irritant.   
      
   The NPA? Much was made that an unknown like LaPointe could do as well as he   
   did.   
      
   But was anything made of the fact that the NPA had to resort to an unknown?   
   LaPointe, whose last job in mainstream journalism was as CBC ombudsman, had   
   nothing to lose except an election. Meanwhile, he raised his profile   
   significantly.   
      
   The NPA will have to do better. If it is to grow, it will have to attract a   
   younger base. It will have to start looking forward rather than back, and   
   realize that the centre, which it once believed it represented, has shifted.   
      
   The city changed. The NPA didn’t. For that, it got kicked to the curb. Guess   
   what it found there.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)