With a year and a half remaining until the next municipal election, it is too early to make bold predictions, but it could look much like the last one. In the lead up to the last election in 2005, both the traditional municipal parties, the NPA and COPE, found themselves riven by internal conflict. COPE had fractured into two parties, with an offshoot called Vision Vancouver, striking out on its own. But many people forget that the NPA itself, while not fracturing, also had deep internal divisions to contend with.

To understand the conflict within the NPA it helps to understand the origins of the NPA. Born out of a time of intense class conflict in Vancouver, the NPA brought together the two established federal and provincial political parties, the Liberals and Tories, under one roof in alliance against the socialist hordes. The marriage of convenience has remained ever since, because if they fractured, neither could win. But the conflict has never stopped.

In the most recent election cycle, Christy Clark, ex-Liberal minister, attempted to win the NPA mayoral nomination. According to Allen Garr, long time NPA back room arranger Marty Zlotnik convinced her to run. She threw her tiara in the ring and waited for the coronation. Establishment figures gathered around both her and Sam Sullivan, the largely silent NPA councilor who took up the fight against her. But the smart money bet on Clark.

While on one level the battle between Clark and Sullivan also relates to the perception of Clark as an interloper without roots in the city or the party, on a deeper level, the battle revolved around what people called, using code, the “new-NPA” versus the “old-NPA.”

The cracks in the NPA coalition surfaced early. Hard feelings persisted in the Sullivan camp over the decision to move the NPA nomination process to June 2005 to allow Christy Clark to make her bid for the mayoral nomination. In January 2006, NPA's Executive Board President, Paul Barbeau quit, following Sullivan's crude move to pack the board with his supporters. First, Sullivan had two staffers, Anna Lilly and Anna Lucarino, remain on the board after he'd appointed them as his personal staff. They eventually stepped down. Then two new names came forward to the board with close ties to the Sullivan camp. The two, Sullivan's campaign manager and Tory operative, Colin Metcalf, and right-wing, Fraser Institute employee, and Parks Board Commissioner, Heather Holden's partner, Doug Leung, got on the board. As Courier columnist Pat Johnson wrote, Sullivan "has ties with federal Conservatives, and people challenging for executive spots at the AGM have deep roots in both federal parties." As Barbeau told the Courier's Mike Howell at the time, “It’s hard not to conclude, I think, that this was designed in some way to take control of the board, and then to presumably use that control to influence the AGM process [in the spring].”

Clark's hubby, Mark Marissen, went on to work as Stephane Dion's National Campaign Co-chair in his successful campaign for the Grit leadership nomination. Dion represented the acceptable left side of the Liberal party. The bickering between the two wings of the party has not stopped. For example, first-time elected Parks Board Commissioner Marty Zlotnik told Allen Garr that City Manager Judy Roger is “running the city," implying Sullivan is not up to the job. In Sullivan is coupled an indomitable will to power with an apparent lack of purpose. He knows he wants to be Mayor, but he doesn't know why. So he grasps helplessly at clichés: it's for the Olympics, it's to create a civil city, it's to promote a new type of development, eco-density. However, Sullivan and his people never flesh-out or make the proposals concrete; they remain pretty phrases. Sullivan appears increasingly isolated within his caucus.

Now Sean Holman, on his Public Eye web site, reports that Vancouver AM Tourism's executive director and past campaign manager for Conservative candidate Stephen Roger, George Higgins, will assist Mayor Sam as his “caucus coordinator.” Subsequently, Allen Garr called him a campaign worker for Sullivan, and paraphrased NPA board chair Mathew Taylor as saying “Higgins was working for Sullivan, not the party.” Surely, some 18 months away till the next election, the main fight Sullivan has in mind is the fight for the nomination of his own party, not for the election itself. Will that fight be joined?

More City Shorts

For COPE and Vision, breaking up is hard to do.

David Cadman's embarrassing outburst in the Courier concerning ex-COPE councilor, Fred Bass's decision to run for the COPE mayoral nomination would not be worth commenting on if it did not reveal a political agenda beneath the fragile ego and school-yard name-calling on the surface. The political significance in the silly piece shows in a single sentence, an oblique, indirect quote: "I don't think it helps things." Just what "things" has Cadman in mind? You guessed it, and in case you didn't, we have Vision mouthpiece, Allen Garr, handy to connect the dots: Bass's announcement will "cause stress with COPE among those, like Cadman, who still see a possibility of a united front with Vision come next election".

But Cadman is not the only COPE elected official hankering like a jilted lover with a serious case of unrequited love, for Vision. Spencer Herbert, who has distinguished himself by voting together with the NPA on controversial projects such as the expansion of the Vancouver Aquarium also continues to push COPE forward to dance once more with Vision.

Money, corruption, and politics

No accidents happen in politics, and as luck would have it, some of Vision Vancouver's ill-gotten funds came blowing back into that party’s face at the same time that Cadman and Garr were carrying on their tête-à-tête in the Courier. Multi-zillionaire John Lefebrve, who gave the largest donation to Vision in the last municipal election, ended up in the clinker. FBI agents picked him up at his “alternative life style” Malibu Beach digs and arrested him on conspiracy to promote gambling charges. Gambling is a tax on working people, and it is fitting that gambling concerns formed key Vision funders. Other gambling concerns who contributed to Vision's war booty included Great Canadian Casinos ($30,750), Hastings Entertainment Inc and Edgewater Casinos Inc. If Lefebrve is found guilty, will Vision pay the money back?

But Lefebrve's ill gotten gains, built on the lost wages of millions of working people, were not the most foul of Vision's funders. Undoubtedly, the worst was Telus's donation of $9,100. Remember that punishing lock-out/strike that went on at Telus from July 21, 2005 to late November 2005? In the donation noted above, $7,600 was received by Vision while Telus was engaged in its vicious war against its employees. A number of Vision's people are in the "union movement,” including councilor Raymond Louie. Geoff Meggs, currently on Vision's executive board, and previously with Mayor Campbell's inner circle, went on to a position within the BC Federation of Labour. With people like Meggs in senior positions within the labour movement, is it any wonder that there was no coordinated labour-sponsored fight back against the Liberals as they gutted the province's social programs and assaulted workers' unions and safety programs? Altogether now: "Sol-i-dar-i-ty For-ev-er".

See Fred run; run Fred, run.

Meanwhile, Fred Bass has upset that whole house of cards masquerading as a “progressive alternative” on the left. Bass's run is based not only on long-held principles of social justice and environmentalism, but on concrete political calculations. A COPE-Green Alliance would upset that facade masquerading as an “alternative” on the left. In fact, following from the analysis of the NPA above, the left side of the NPA is every bit as “progressive” as Vision. As Kevin Potvin wrote in the Courier recently, Vision and the NPA could end up poaching votes from one another, leaving the left to COPE-Green. At the same time, Bass's announcement has forced COPE into a discussion about their relationship with Vision far in advance of the next poll, and that does COPE a favour. If they'd left it to the last moment, pressure to settle with Vision could have created a herd-like stampede back to Vision.