The opposition parties in Vancouver\u2019s City Hall are debating publicly whether to join forces in the upcoming municipal election this year.<\/p>\n
OneCity, one of the opposition parties, extended an offer to COPE and the Green Party to initiate a primary election among their members to select one candidate to face off against Mayor Ken Sim and his ABC party.<\/p>\n
OneCity mayoral candidate William Azaroff says in a written statement that the goal of this offer is to avoid vote splitting among the progressive parties.<\/p>\n
He wants the parties to cooperate and to establish a \u201cprogressive majority.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Greens and COPE say that they are reviewing the offer, yet both parties announced that COPE had tabled a similar proposal in the past and expressed confusion about how OneCity\u2019s offer was made.<\/p>\n
COPE says that an offer to unify the other progressive parties had already been pushed forward by its members at a recent party meeting and accepted by the Greens.<\/p>\n
Additionally, the Greens warn that any cooperation must include agreements across the city council, school, and park boards to avoid any single party dominating the election.<\/p>\n
The olive branch comes with conditions set by OneCity as it expects the other parties to respond by Friday.<\/p>\n
UBC\u2019s political scientist, Stewart Prest, says that building a unified front against Ken Sim is easier said than done.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way in which OneCity is proceeding right now is more of a kind of ultimatum, saying the other two parties have to meet their requirements by such and such a date. That is not really in the spirit of collaboration,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Prest says that while there seems to be interest, all comes down to how the parties conduct the vote.<\/p>\n
Municipal election: Oct. 17, 2026<\/p>\n
Some of OneCity\u2019s requirements include that the primary must be concluded in 45 days, the costs are shared equally, and that the losing candidates must agree to withdraw in favour of the emerging winning progressive candidate.<\/p>\n
Prest says laying down several requirements may get in the way of collaborating in good faith, and that the public nature of the debate through press releases would not help the cause either.<\/p>\n
He adds that if it comes to a primary, Councillor\u00a0Pete Fry has a good chance to lead that charge.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we are going by name recognition, I think Pete Fry really does have the advantage,\u201d Prest said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is a well-known quantity in Vancouver politics. He has served on the council for a number of years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vancouverites will head to the polls on Oct. 17, 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The opposition parties in Vancouver\u2019s City Hall are debating publicly whether to join forces in the upcoming municipal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":482414,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194298],"tags":[49,48,55],"class_list":["post-482413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vancouver","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482413\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/482414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}