COPE to nominate mayoral candidate in June

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      For the first time since the 2002 municipal election, the Coalition of Progressive Electors is set to nominate a candidate for mayor.

      The once-mighty Vancouver political party, which has no seats on city council, park board, and school board, has scheduled its nominating conference for June 7 and 8. At the conference, COPE members will choose their party's nominees for mayor, council, park board, and school board.

      “Last spring, hundreds of COPE members voted to run a Mayor, and a majority at Council, School Board, and Park Board," Sean Antrim, executive director of COPE, said in a news release today (January 14).

      "The Nominating and Policy Conferences are our members’ opportunity to choose our Mayoral candidate, and candidates for Council, School Board, and Park Board, and to choose what policies we will be campaigning on in 2014.”

      COPE will hold its policy conference on March 29 and 30.

      In December, COPE lost its sole elected official when school trustee Allan Wong left the party and joined the ruling Vision Vancouver.

      The party, which forged alliances with Vision for the 2008 and 2011 elections, hasn't contested the mayoralty since Larry Campbell won the chair in the 2002 election.

      Comments

      8 Comments

      Burger King

      Jan 14, 2014 at 1:48pm

      Finally COPE is showing some backbone.

      RUK

      Jan 14, 2014 at 3:40pm

      Like, would it be, like, Ali Yerevani?

      Miranda da Cruz Diaz

      Jan 14, 2014 at 4:40pm

      For the life of me, I can't think of anyone at COPE who would be a winning, credible candidate for any position. In fact, I can't think of anyone who is a known civic quantity and is a COPE leader, except TIme Louis. Is he going to step up and run for mayor? Well, I guess if the COPE membership wants a bitter and nasty type with what seems to me to be a total focus on himself, that might make sense. I think Tim should look up the numbers from the 2011 election for a reality check. Running for council he only got about 44,000 votes and that was with 3 spots left 'open' by Vision. I don't think they'll do that this time, And, even if people in Vancouver are fed up with Vision, and rightly so, the civic scene is crowded with new groups. COPE has not been able to put itself forward as a positive, thoughtful, creative, and truly people-oriented alternative. Who is involved anyhow and what have they done? It just seems to have become a fractious, unpleasant, marginal, and lacklustre shadow of what it was once.

      Elvenkitty

      Jan 14, 2014 at 10:12pm

      I do love how people aren't required to back up their assertions about COPE. All you have to do, if you don't like COPE, is -assert- that COPE do not have "a winning, credible candidate" other than one person asserted to be "bitter and nasty", and top it off with an assertion that COPE somehow are not "positive, thoughtful, creative, and truly people-oriented". Especially that word "truly", which we all know determines the trueness of everything from favorable qualities to Scotsmen; "positive" is also key, because when you can't actually respond to the criticism, you can still restrict the discussion to "positive" only as though that makes all criticism magically disappear. As a last, just fire off some implicit assertions of COPE being total nobodies who do nothing, and one about how they used to be good but aren't anymore, implying that they were so before the Great Responsible People split away to form Vision.

      Who cares about evidence or facts. It's COPE, they're silly leftists. You don't NEED evidence or facts to dismiss them. You can say whatever the hell you want, because of course only other silly leftists would disagree with your Received Gospel Of All Things COPE, with its magical insights that do not require facts or evidence.

      The predictable nature of these empty "detractors" -- we should more appropriately call them magicians, since they act like they can make inconvenient arguments disappear with some flashy words and a magic wand -- makes me wonder, at least sometimes, if people aren't literally being sent out to make these posts by Vision or its supporters. By my observations they seem quite...well-tailored, as though they were scripted for the purpose of simply making COPE look bad whenever they might possibly get support.

      Whatever the case, the only appropriate response is [citation needed] until these magicians can reveal the secret knowledge behind their claims. I myself will follow the example of Houdini by applying skepticism to these unsupported claims.

      Arthur Vandelay

      Jan 15, 2014 at 7:15am

      @Elvenkitty - the Fire This Time voting block has allowed the Tim Louis/Che Guevara faction to dominate COPEs executive which has led to any non-AK toting Sandanistas leaving the party. You know this. Enough with the faux indignation. It's a loon squad down there.

      G

      Jan 15, 2014 at 10:06pm

      Appealing to the disenfranchised and propertyless masses, as a "Fire This Time" dominated platform likely will do, is a sure fire way to electoral destruction. Any platform that opposes property ownership is non-starter outside a very small segment of the population. The COPE left appears to be recycling "ideological purity" as a priority over electability and will make the pro-private property vote come down to yet another referendum on bike lanes.

      LOL

      Jan 15, 2014 at 11:09pm

      Actually "Independent Cope" swept onto Cope's board last year, winning position after position invites that were not even close, we're talking 10 times the number of votes compared to their opponents. This clearly demonstrated that the rank of file of Cope, after having affirmed electoral coalitions with Vision, looked at their party, and decided to go in another direction. Of course "Arthur Vandelay" knows this but prefers wild hyperbole and character assassination. So it goes.

      Anita Romaniuk

      Jan 17, 2014 at 1:49am

      A candidate for mayor provides a voice in the media and a focus for the other candidates on a slate, as well as campaign staff and volunteers, to coalesce around. He or she should be articulate, media-savvy, quick of the take-up, and grounded in the policies set out in the platform. They do not need to be a household name - that will come with the territory. Clearly the electoral agreement with Vision turned out to be a negative in 2011. Anyone who would want to repeat that is deluding themselves that the result would any different. There are a lot of people in Vancouver who do not like the direction Vancouver is taking. The Vision Council and Park Board seem to have lost their sense of accountability to the public, as the recent court decision directing the City to provide requested financial information to the community centre associations illustrates. COPE has both long-time roots in the city, a commitment to accountability, and a mix of fresh faces and long-time well-respected activists as its base. This is OUR city government; it shouldn't be dominated by well-heeled special interests!