On Thursday April 4th, 2024, members of the NDP Vancouver-Little Mountain riding association held a nomination meeting to select a candidate to replace retiring NDP MLA George Heyman.
There were two candidates on the ballot: OneCity Vancouver Councillor Christine Boyle and former Vision Vancouver City Councillor Andrea Reimer.
Reimer began her political career in 2002 when she was elected to the Vancouver School Board as a Green Party candidate. After losing when rerunning for School Board in 2005, she then joined Vision Vancouver and was elected in 2008 as a Vision candidate for City Council. She remained a Vision Vancouver Councillor for four terms, until she chose not to run again in 2018. She is now teaching public policy at the University of British Columbia.
When in office, her party – Vision Vancouver – was so tied to Vancouver’s developers that those developers abandoned their long-time political favourites — the Non-Partisan Association (NPA) – and shifted their financial contributions to Vision Vancouver to such a large degree that Vision was able to basically purchase election outcome after election outcome. They spent an unprecedented $3.4 million on their 2014 election campaign. As a pro-developer and pro-gambling party, many described Vision as the NPA with bicycle lanes.
Boyle has been a Vancouver City Councillor for OneCity Vancouver since the 2018 municipal election. Boyle is a United Church minister and is a noted climate activist. She was instrumental in persuading the United Church of Canada in 2015 to divest from fossil fuels, She was also a delegate to the United Nations’ COP21 session on behalf of the United Church.
Reimer initially looked to be the front runner. As a rule, retiring politicians do not support any one candidate in the nomination battle to replace them. Mr. Heyman threw this long-held tradition out the window and openly endorsed Ms. Reimer.
For genuine progressives, the choice was crystal clear. Christine Boyle was the candidate we wanted to win.
It was a very hard-fought campaign with volunteers from both camps visiting the homes of literally every NDP member in the riding, in many cases not once but twice or even three times.
By the evening of the nomination meeting, Boyle, who was the underdog, had significantly narrowed the gap. The gap narrowed even further when she was endorsed by Caily Lynch, the wife of NDP Premier David Eby.
When the two candidates then gave their speeches, Boyle hit it out of the ballpark! She decisively outperformed Reimer in every metric.
But it was still far too close to call. Had Boyle edged ahead of Reimer, or would she lose by a hair?
We waited on the edge of our seats as the ballots were counted.
Finally, the result was announced. Boyle was the winner! While the vote count has never been revealed publicly, it was unofficially reported to me by a number of sources that Boyle won with 82 votes to Reimer’s 71 votes!!
Among other consequences, Boyles’ defeat of Reimer is yet another nail in the coffin of Vision.
Should Boyle go on to win the riding in the October 2024 provincial election, she will bring a breath of fresh air, coupled with progressive politics, to Victoria.
Daily atmospheric CO2 [Courtesy of CO2.Earth]
Latest daily total (April 12, 2024): 424.80ppm
One year ago (April 12, 2023): 423.23ppm
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