Out of the recent fracturing of Vancouver’s left-wing Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE) party, a new political party has emerged to grapple with other civic parties. Although this change could affect leftist voting preference, SFU city program director, Gordon Price, questions whether it will effectively challenge the current party in power.
The new contender, called OneCity, was announced on May 12 by RJ Aquino — a former COPE city council candidate who has been backed by prominent Vancouver leftists — and aims to reduce the growing inequalities in the city. Aquino previously sat on the Vancouver City Planning Commission and is currently on the board of directors for Collingwood Neighborhood House.
The formation of a new party can be complicated, explained Price. Many difficulties — such as fracturing — exist for a host of reasons within a political party, however, overcoming this problem can be crucial. Price said, “If the party itself does not fracture, they have a real advantage in incumbency.”
Price attributed the fracture within the COPE party, resulting in the creation of OneCity, to “personality-based” issues, as opposed to policy-based. Price noted a few past instances of personality-based fractures: “You can make the case that it happened in 1972 with the [Non-Partisan Association (NPA)], when the team council came in here. It certainly happened in 2000 [. . .] Then, it happened with Larry Campbell. It happened again with the NPA!” Price said.
Even so, fractures do not necessarily represent a prevalent phenomenon — trends show that one party tends to maintain power for at least a couple of decades. Price explained, “The norm since the 1930s has been for the NPA, for one party, to stay in power for very long stretches of time. For the time I was on the council, 15 years, we only had two mayors: Gordon Campbell and Philip Owen.”
He continued, “The voters seem to go for incumbents. It goes up and down a bit. But they’ll stick with what they know unless the party itself fractures. But that tends to coincide with politics.” In other words, slight variations exist in the political power spectrum, but voter consistency reflects a persistent voting trend of citizens individually. People tend to vote one way — unless the political party of the voter appears to fracture, as is happening now.
Price said, “The public doesn’t like the internal fracturing that the personalities [create] within the parties [. . .] So [voters] tend to look for an alternative or are, at least, more open to it.”
Price commented on the general political landscape: “What we have at the moment is a fracturing of the political spectrum, but the party in power seems very much to be solid: [Gregor Robertson is [a] strong mayoral candidate insofar as he is known, [the] party shows no signs of division, [a] great deal of internal discipline, [we] certainly don’t hear of an councillors going after one another.”
He mused, “Will that be enough? We will see.”
