Sam Sullivan’s ousting from the helm of the NPA may have sealed Peter Ladner’s fate

There’s a saying about the peril of staging a party coup: “He who wields the knife never wears the crown.”

Reelected Vision Vancouver councillor Tim Stevenson borrowed from this line to explain why the Non-Partisan Association’s Peter Ladner didn’t become mayor in the November 15 election.

Although other reasons can be attributed to the defeat of Ladner, and the NPA as well, Stevenson argued that the party’s undoing started when Ladner challenged incumbent Mayor Sam Sullivan for the mayoral nomination.

“The guy who stabs the prince to death never becomes prince himself,” Stevenson told the Georgia Straight. “It’s very, very dangerous to go after your own mayor and cause a coup and think that you could just go there and take over and you’ll become the mayor. It doesn’t happen. People are very suspicious of someone that does that. They look at him as the one that drove the knife into the mayor.”

Following a divisive leadership race, the party put on a brave face. Incumbent civic officials who endorsed Sullivan rallied behind the new leader. For his part, Ladner promised to heal the fractured party.

But, as Sullivan indicated to the Straight a week before the election, not everyone was willing to go along. “You know, I, as a loyal NPA [member], have encouraged all the people that wanted to see me as mayor to get behind Peter Ladner and the NPA team,” the outgoing mayor said. “But a lot of the support that I had was not NPA support—it was my support—and so I’m not sure that I’ve been all that successful.”

Defeated council candidate Michael Geller endorsed neither Sullivan nor Ladner for the nomination. He now considers that the leadership change contributed to the party’s debacle. “Sam Sullivan had a lot of supporters, and I believe that many of them decided to stay home,” Geller told the Straight.

Long-time NPA member and Chinese community leader Maggie Ip was a top Sullivan supporter. During the campaign, she came out in a radio ad for councillor Suzanne Anton but no mention was made about Ladner. Anton is the only NPA council member who survived the rout.

“Certainly it started out with not a very positive, not a very pleasant kind of environment,” Ip said of the party’s state after Sullivan’s bitter fall.

An exit poll by SFU political scientist Kennedy Stewart indicated a drop of up to 10 percent in voter turnout in some of the NPA bailiwicks on the city’s West Side.

In addition, election results showed that the NPA lost support in areas east of Main Street that Sullivan drew upon in the 2005 election.

Former NPA president Tung Chan suggested that there’s a lesson to be learned when a party ousts a sitting mayor. “When the change is not being managed well, people are not enthusiastic coming out to vote,” Chan told the Straight.

Ladner beat Sullivan for the nomination by a margin of only 80 votes. In the civic election, he managed to get only 48,794 votes, compared to Sullivan’s tally of 61,543 in 2005.

Reelected park commissioner Ian Robertson was one of only two incumbent NPA civic officials who backed Ladner’s nomination. He said he didn’t want to speculate as to whether or not Sullivan could have waged a more competitive election campaign if he had won the nomination. “I heard from my constituents a year ago that they were unhappy with the leadership of the NPA, and that was one of the fundamental reasons why I supported Peter Ladner,” Robertson said.

Sullivan cheerleader Kim Capri lost her bid for another term in council. Capri maintained that the Ladner-led team that went into the election came together very well. However, Capri also noted: “I questioned whether there were some people who had been very active in the 2005 campaign played a role, because I didn’t see them there.”

With only one elected councillor, one park board commissioner, and two school board trustees, the party faces the unenviable task of taking stock of its diminished fortunes in the dead of winter. NPA director Michael Klassen told the Straight that the party will hold its long delayed annual general meeting on December 29 this year.