TEAM and COPE announce their candidates
Colleen Hardwick tries for a comeback
Direct link to Colleen Hardwick berating a speaker (video posted to her YouTube channel)
More candidates announced for Vancouver's 2-seat byelection. Chad Pawson, CBC News. Colleen Hardwick and Theodore Abbott are running for TEAM, and Sean Orr is running for COPE. Lucy Maloney is the OneCity candidate, and the Green Party will nominate one candidate. The byelection date is Saturday April 5.
During the 2018-2022 term, the three most consistent No votes on housing were Colleen Hardwick (TEAM), Jean Swanson (COPE), and Adriane Carr (Green). Hardwick ran for mayor in 2022 (getting only 10% of the vote), and Jean Swanson was defeated. Adriane Carr was re-elected, but has now decided to step down.
I think of OneCity as the progressive pro-housing party, and I'm really hoping they keep their foothold on council, so that they have some visibility going into the 2026 election. Christine Boyle was both progressive and a solid Yes vote on housing. The only downside of her getting elected as an MLA last October is that OneCity may end up losing their one seat.
Lucy Maloney's originally from Australia; she's married with school-age children. She's best known as a road-safety advocate (she's active with Vision Zero Vancouver). But she's also a lawyer with years of experience in both the public sector and the private sector, so I'm confident she'll be effective in both understanding problems (like the municipal red tape and taxes that strangle new housing) and pushing to fix them.
My plan is to vote for Lucy only, to maximize the chances of her getting elected. (If the Greens nominate someone who's solidly pro-housing, I suppose I may vote for them as well, but my sense is that the Green coalition includes a lot of people who are skeptical of the need for new housing.)