Senator Larry Campbell was mayor once, but at Vision Vancouver's first ever AGM he said he has no political "left-right" leanings. Speaking alongside former COPE councillor Jim Green, Campbell spoke of Vision's vision heading to 2008 and the next election. "They'll be writing a book about this in 50 years," Campbell proclaimed at the end of the night of October 16, at the Chinese Cultural Centre on East Pender Street. Around 300 Vision members had filed through the doors. "We're making history," he said, having just matched Green's donation to Vision of $500. "Vision is not about left and right...I used to talk about left and right, and [former mayoral assistant Geoff] Meggs and [former executive assistant Stephen] Leary would pull me aside." Vision, then, is claiming not to be about left and right. Does that make it centre? Despite his purported reluctance to adhere to labels, Campbell's comments in the past suggest the opposite. Rewind to November 19, 2005, when outgoing mayor Campbell spoke about Jim Green's defeat at the hands of Sullivan. "All of us [in Vision Vancouver] that ran for COPE I think recognized that this was not a place where we could accomplish things, that it wasn't pragmatic enough," Campbell told reporters. "We all come from a place, centre-left; probably I'm most centre. Raymond Louie is a trade unionist, bright, and will be mayor someday. No question. Tim Stevenson, Jim Green, Heather Deal, Heather Harrison, and George Chow. You learn, and if you don't learn then you're destined for the trash basket of the world.” So Larry Campbell, centre-left centrist pragmatist, is not on the political scale. Just call him Senator Da Vinci. And we'll see how kind history is to Campbell in 50 years. As for the Straight's own history with Campbell, well, let's just say it has been interesting. The one-term mayor and former coroner referred to news editor Charlie Smith as a conspiracy theorist in December 2004. In the November 2002 edition of Vancouver magazine, Larry again pulls out his left-right compass. "Obviously I'm closer to the centre....But I think if you look at our platform, we are fairly centre-left."