Vancouver-West End nomination heats up
Posted August 19, 2008 by Sacha Peter - Link
Category: BC Liberals
Comments (7)
Arthur Griffiths, the previous owner of the Vancouver Canucks, now has a competitor for the BC Liberal nomination in the newly created Vancouver-West End riding.
Dave Harper (no relation to the Prime Minister) has entered the race. According to a CKNW article, about Harper:
Harper says his expertise in health and education is his strength, “I’ve been a health educator for more than 25 years and specialize in health; especially health promotion and aboriginal health and education; especially e-learning and aboriginal post-secondary education. So I’m bringing some professional expertise to the BC Caucus, I think, that will be really valuable.”
Harper says he has the backing of North Vancouver Liberal MLA Dan Jarvis.
My initial thoughts about the Vancouver-West End riding was when I saw Griffiths put in his hat that it would mean a victory for him. When I did the numbers of how Vancouver-Burrard split in that particular area, I realized that he would have a very tough battle – West-End is 48% NDP, 35% BC Liberal using 2005 election results.
Arthur Griffiths has name recognition to anybody that followed the Canucks-Grizzlies saga. After that, he tried being part of the olympic committee, but for whatever reason wasn’t accepted into the group. Presumably he has a rolodex of people that can help him with his nomination, which is why I was rather surprised to see another person getting into this nomination battle.
There is little public information out there on Dave Harper other than what’s on his website – a UCFV (now rebranded UFV) Kinesiology professor. His platform is rather generic (e.g. “I believe we need an integrated and comprehensive plan for economic development in BC.”), save for his thoughts on how he would like to update the residential tenancy act to force landlords to accept small pets. Unfortunately, while this idea is undoubtedly intended to making more housing accessible to those people that have small pets, it is also a great way of encouraging more landlords to pull units out of the rental market as depreciation is faster with a pet around (unless by “small pets” he means goldfish).
The way he’s trying to sell himself (at least from his website) is internally inconsistent. For example, his motto is “Defend the West End”, but he talks a lot about high-speed internet in remote communities and for educational purposes, which seems to be something he has a genuine interest in and has a background to prove it, but he then spends a lot of time talking about other issues that are beyond his career strengths. This is a classic Paul Martin “I can be everything for everybody” approach which isn’t going to work.
I see the line “I am recognized as an industry expert in the biotech sector and I am a best-selling author on the topic and an industry consultant.” Having a generic name like David Harper doesn’t help his cause, but it took me 5 minutes of searching to find out he wrote a book called “Investing in Biotech – How to Profit from the Biopharmaceutical Revolution” which was published well after the peak of the biotech market in the year 2000 – chances are he would have had more sales if the book was written three years back from the 2002 publication date.
There was one reader review on Amazon, which makes the claim of “best-selling” rather dubious – had the book been a major seller, there would have been more reviews on the site (even back in 2002, there would have been many reviewers on Amazon, or even showing up from Google searches). The sentence also implies that he’s written multiple books on the topic, but I could not find any more books that he wrote. The problem with such claims makes me wonder whether the stuff on the rest of the site is true or not – e.g. what small business he actually runs, what “private hedge fund” he runs, etc.
On a side note, the book is available at my library, so I will borrow it since coincidentally biotechnology is a sector that I invest in as well. I doubt, after what I’ve written here, that Harper would give me an autograph.
The last time that “Vancouver-Burrard” was won by a right of centre party (Socreds) was 1969 and that was a close contest. The NDP held the riding (in its various boundaries) in ‘72, ‘75, ‘79, ‘83, ‘86, ‘91, ‘96 with 2001 being the anomaly.
The Liberals only held Burrard in ‘05 by a sliver (11 votes) and that was due to the massive condo development that has occurred in North False Creek, Yaletown, and Coal Harbour.
The new Vancouver West End riding sheds North False Creek and Yaletown and the demographics are very NDP-oriented. The new riding is almost like a donut, with the Liberals having strength north of Robson Street and south of Pacific, while being competitive west of Denman.
Everything else in-between is solidly NDP.
Doesn’t matter who the Liberals run, it should be considered a relatively strong NDP riding just as the breakaway Vancouver False Creek riding is strong Liberal.
The only Vancouver ridings that are competitive based upon current opinion polls, IMHO, are Vancouver Fairview and possibly to a lesser extent Van Kensington.
I think that Vancouver-Point Grey should be considered competitive as well; it’s probably in the same league as Kensington. The NDP held it in 1991, were within about 1,000 votes in 1996, and were closer than many expected in 2005, despite having an arguably poor candidate and few resources. Fraserview is as competitive as Kensington too, I think, given the right support and candidate for the NDP. I think that if Ken Johnston has run for reelection there last time, the NDPO may have put more resources in and may have taken the seat back – it was only a 900 vote spread last time, if I’m not mistaken, and the NDP held it in 1996.
BJ is generally correct, and I agree with Derrick’s specific analysis. Kensington will be slightly closer (first due to Chudnovsky leaving and secondly due to the demographic shift of the area) but still leans NDP, and the same can be said for Vancouver-Point Grey (although obviously leaning BC Liberal) – the fact that Gordon Campbell is running there probably represents a 5% swing on name alone (he’s not any more or less an asset or liability than he was back in 1996, 2001 and 2005). If Campbell was not running in Vancouver-Point Grey it would be a swing seat.
It’s easy to say that if the Greens stayed at home and didn’t field a candidate there that the NDP would have been able to make it much closer, but would those people that voted Green vote NDP anyway? Unlikely – it’s usually more of a protest vote than anything else. There’s also the influence of the university district, which disproportionately splits the left. The March 17, 2008 Vancouver Quadra by-election is also good evidence of this.
I guess my analysis was taken within the context of public opinion polls (Ipsos and Mustel). At this point prior to the May, 2005 election, Mustel had the NDP leading by as much as 12% during July, 2004 and the final spread was 4% in favour of the Liberals in the following May, 2005 election.
Conversely, the Liberals have held a lead in the same opinion polls for the last 2 1/2 years in the range of 10% to 18%, which is unprecedented for an incumbent BC government over the past 30 odd years.
Polling trends over the next 8 – 9 months will affect future analysis.
The university effect is interesting, and difficult to assess. People attending UBC who are from the lower mainland will often not live on campus, so their vote is diluted across the city or region. On campus, a lot of the people in residence choose to vote in their ‘home’ riding, across the province or even across the country as the case may be.
More difficult is the fact that our May election dates fall outside of the full-time Fall/Spring semesters for SFU, definitely, and I believe for UBC too. I’d love to look at the poll-by-poll results for the university seats (which I think are Point Grey, Burquitlam, and Oak Bay-Gordon Head).
I think that you’re definitely right about the Green/NDP split – assuming that Green votes are all cloaked NDP votes is really simplistic, and it’s an assumption that a lot of lazy pundits get away with. That said, there is more overlap there than with, say the NDP and Liberals, I think, in most ridings.
Vancouver Fairview might not be the only by-election to be called. While current Vancouver-Burrard MLA Lorne Mayencourt is retiring from provincial politics, that retirement has now been speeded up with his decision to seek the federal Conservative nomination and become candidate in Vancouver Centre during the imminent federal election.
Apparently he’s in the process of writing the speaker of the legislature to advise him of his imminent resignation as MLA. [Source: BCTV Global]
So if there’s another by-election called in the current boundaries of Vancouver Burrard, won by the Liberals by the closest of margins… 11 votes… in 2005 (12,009 to 11,998) who will be both major parties’ candidates?
The Liberals have nominated BC Cancer Foundation president and chief executive officer Mary McNeil to run in the new Vancouver Flase Creek riding, the Liberal-leaning part of Vancouver Burrard.
It appears that the likely Liberal candidate in NDP-leaning Vancouver West End will be Arthur Griffiths.
If that’s the case, my hunch is that Griffiths will be the candidate in the by-election [in order to further raise his profile for the next general election] and he has a 50 – 50 chance of winning same.
My hunch is also that Spencer Herbert will be the NDP’s by-election candidate since I believe that he is the frontrunner (if not already nominated) for the new Vancouver West End riding. I don’t believe that the NDP has nominated in Vancouver False Creek yet.
Legally, Mayencourt doesn’t have to resign until he gets elected as an MP, which he would stand zero chance of doing if he ran against Hedi Fry in this upcoming election. I still don’t know why he’s nuts enough to try.
If he resigned, hypothetically, on September 19th (guessing that’s when the close of nominations will be), then the Premier would have to call a by-election by March 19, 2009, for an election date of April 16. This will run against the May 12, 2009 writ period, and thus I do not think there will be a by-election in this case.