Vancouver Greens mayoral candidate Pete Fry says he won\u2019t participate in a proposal by OneCity to hold a \u201cprogressive primary\u201d ahead of this year\u2019s election.<\/p>\n
OneCity\u2019s mayoral candidate, William Azaroff, is calling on three left-leaning parties in Vancouver to present a single mayoral candidate, in order to increase their chances of unseating Mayor Ken Sim.<\/p>\n
But Fry says OneCity\u2019s offer wasn\u2019t presented in the spirit of collaboration between his caucus and COPE, the third progressive party, and contains rules designed to benefit Azaroff\u2019s campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is very myopic and self-serving,\u201d Fry said.<\/p>\n
Fry criticized the way in which OneCity approached \u2013 or didn\u2019t approach \u2013 the other progressive parties.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe found out about this concept through a press release that we were not invited to. We were not made aware of this until the media started reporting it on the same day as the budget.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fry noted the offer \u2013 which he described as an \u201cultimatum\u201d \u2013 includes a rule stating that only registered members of the three parties can vote in the proposed primary.<\/p>\n
While OneCity just held a membership drive, offering discounted $1 memberships in some cases to extend its base, the Greens and COPE have not run similar campaigns recently.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be clear, I don\u2019t think OneCity put forward the people\u2019s primary at all. OneCity put forward the OneCity primary. The people\u2019s primary is really ascertaining the will of the people, not the OneCity membership,\u201d Fry added.<\/p>\n
He acknowledged OneCity has a vocal base of supporters, but said a strong online presence doesn\u2019t necessarily convert into success at the polls.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou often find these sorts of loud voices that are very organized and spend a lot of money and have sort of online armies of trolls and bots and commenters that don\u2019t necessarily translate to electoral success,\u201d Fry said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn fact, oftentimes it really just contributes to the sort of a bubble and echo chamber.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fry didn\u2019t shut the door to cooperation completely, however.<\/p>\n
He says he is still happy to work with the other parties on a common path forward, but that has to involve fair collaboration with every party involved.<\/p>\n
\u2013 With files from Ben Bouguerra.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Vancouver Greens mayoral candidate Pete Fry says he won\u2019t participate in a proposal by OneCity to hold a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":484437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194298],"tags":[49,48,55],"class_list":["post-484436","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\/484436","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=484436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}