The problems for the Non-Partisan Association continue to grow. This week Mark Marissen, former husband of past premier Christy Clark, announced his intention to run for mayor in Vancouver’s October 2022 civic election. This further divides the already divided right-wing vote.

Since its founding in 1936, the NPA has almost always been able to unite the centre-right vote around its mayoral candidate. Recently things have begun to go terribly wrong for the party in this regard.

Last week, as I described in my most recent blog, the NPA board met in secret, selecting park board commissioner John Coupar as its mayoral candidate. Just days later, Ken Sim, the NPA mayoral candidate in 2018, announced that he and others are now launching a new civic party. Although he would not come right out and confirm it, he will most certainly be the mayoral candidate for the newly named A Better City party.

Then on April 14, Marissen announced that he too would be running in 2022 for the mayor’s chair. He is a long-time federal and provincial Liberal. In the early 1990s he was the party’s national youth director and has subsequently been an organizer in numerous electoral campaigns. He remains very well connected to the federal Liberals and according to this week’s announcement, played a significant role in getting the feds to commit to very substantial funding arrangements with TransLink.

So where does this leave Vancouver’s NPA? I would predict dead in the water. It cannot possibly win the mayor’s chair with two other credible centre-right mayoral candidates splitting the centre-right vote. With no prospect of winning the mayor’s chair, its down-ballot prospects could become equally grim—it will have a hard time fielding a full slate of council, school board, and park board candidates when it is obvious to all that the 2022 election will be a lost cause.

All of the above must be putting a smile on Mayor Kennedy Stewart’s face. He has not been perfect but has been much better than would have been the case had a pro-developer, free enterprise candidate been successful in November 2018. I am cautiously optimistic that the centre/green/left voters will coalesce around our incumbent mayor and the NPA will once again be defeated.

Daily atmospheric CO₂ [Courtesy of CO2.Earth]

Latest daily total (Apr. 16, 2021): 418.37 ppm

One year ago (Apr. 6, 2020): 417.08 ppm