Dan Fumano: An especially busy, and at times wacky, week in Vancouver politics

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This week, one longtime local political insider, who has worked on several election campaigns, commented that Vancouver’s 2018 mayoral race is already “the most bizarre and wide-open election I’ve ever seen.”

And election day is still more than 150 sleeps away.

But while the next couple of weeks may or may not be any less crazy, we should at least be able to get more clarity on a few key issues.

The Non-Partisan Association made headlines over the last two weeks as its mayoral nomination process unfolded in decidedly dramatic fashion, after the party board rejected its own sitting caucus member’s bid for the nomination. Ever since NPA Coun. Hector Bremner’s application for the mayoral nomination was shot down, he has engaged in an increasingly contentious public back-and-forth with party president Gregory Baker.

Bremner sat this past week in city council representing the NPA, and has not yet made any public indication that he could, following the public spat with the party president, leave the party caucus. But he’s expected to make an announcement soon — possibly next week — about his next steps, which could involve striking out with his own new party or slate, and running against the NPA.

The question of who will run under the NPA banner for the city’s top job will be decided at the NPA’s mayoral nomination meeting, where members will select a nominee from three candidates: John Coupar, Ken Sim and Glen Chernen. The meeting was set for May 29 but was abruptly changed on Friday to another date not yet announced. 

While the NPA, Vancouver’s traditionally centre-right party, appears to be on the verge of splintering, the left side of the city’s political spectrum seems even more fractured.

A pair of independent mayoral candidates both on leave from Simon Fraser University, Shauna Sylvester and federal NDP MP Kennedy Stewart, have both repeatedly emphasized their commitment to seeing their respective names on the ballot in October.

Vision Vancouver had previously publicly floated the idea of not running their own mayoral candidate this year, after a decade of dominating local politics, and supporting an independent candidate or another party’s nominee. But now it appears that two candidates are likely to seek Vision’s mayoral nomination: Ian Campbell, the hereditary chief of the Squamish Nation who held a campaign launch on Monday, and Taleeb Noormohamed, a tech entrepreneur expected to officially announce his candidacy next week.

Meanwhile, the next two weeks could also see the announcement of an arrangement between five local left-leaning political groups, according to the head of the local labour group that’s been working for four months to broker a plan between them.

Vancouver and District Labour Council president Stephen Von Sychowski said Friday he believes we’ll hear an announcement before May’s end of an arrangement between Vision, the Greens, OneCity, COPE and Jean Swanson’s team on how many candidates each party will run for council, school board and park board. 

A pair of upstart parties also plan to run mayoral candidates. ProVancouver is putting forward financial planner and political neophyte David Chen, while Wai Young, the former Conservative Member of Parliament for Vancouver South, is running under the banner Coalition Vancouver.

Meanwhile, Adriane Carr, the Greens’ sole representative on Vancouver city council for the last two terms, has been, for months, weighing whether she’d run for council again this year or make a mayoral run. She said this week that she’ll be making an official announcement “soon,” but wouldn’t elaborate on how soon, precisely, is “soon.”

dfumano@postmedia.com

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