A proposed conversation about centralized campaigning (fascinating stuff, I know)

Last night I attended the COPE pub night, a lovely get-together at Original Joe's (I know, where?). A few beer, some nachos, a brief discussion of the soon-to-be demise of David Cadman (according to Jim Green, anyway), and everything was ticketyboo. Then, we started talking about the BC NDP campaign from the spring. At this point, alarm bells should have gone off, as it is a highly contentious issue on the left in BC, particularly among urbanites. An hour or so later, and they had to pull us away from each other to get us to pay our bill.

I would like to continue the discussion in a less chaotic forum, so have invited the participants to join me in a discussion that I will post on this blog as it unfolds. I'm not exactly sure of the format yet.

UPDATE:

I have two enterprising individuals who will be taking part in the discussion that I hope to foster over the next short while. It really is a fascinating topic to us campaigners.

And a link to Jim Green's claims added above.

Gregor, Vision, COPE and MacKinnon win

So We won. We is capitalized because it was a huge group effort. My close friend asked us the other night how many elections we had truly celebrated (and drinking too much and dancing at Celebrities doesn't count if the election win was marginal). For me: none. That's right, I've never truly and fully celebrated an election win, because I've always voted for the losing party. Partly this is due to timing, partly due to the vagaries of provincial politics.

But this win is ours. Mine. Whatever. It feels great. Now the real work begins, and all that, but hello Dolly, we won. Congratulations to all those that made it in, condolences to those that didn't (on all sides), and I look forward to working with you all in the future. Starting tomorrow, after brunch.

Oh, and election results here and here.

Vancouver election prediction

This election is getting weird (see last post), and most of us just want it to be over. I'm looking forward to E-day, to the energy, the excitement, the 12-hour day and the party afterward.

My election prediction, based solely on impressions:
Councilors: 6 Vision, 3 NPA, 1 COPE
Mayor: Gregor, by...7500 votes.

And the most blogged about award goes to....

The Vision/COPE/Green election pact!

Frances Bula, Irwin Loy and Bill Tieleman all posted in the past two hours about the tentative agreement reached by the three parties. It is big news.* A friend at COPE asked me to urge any COPE members I know to get out and vote for this proposal at the meeting on Sunday.

"I understand that COPE board member Tim Louis voted against this." - Frances Bula

I'm shocked, just shocked, that he would vote against some sort of cooperation between progressives in this city...

*though it's not posted on the Vision website.