Timing. West Vancouver’s overtime mayoral election – like a very long, tight basketball game (Booth, 4,397, Sager 4,376) – might have ended in a different result and a different mayor if timing was factored in.
Follow the bouncing ball. Right, it’s my (basket?)ball and my theory. But I say it’s convincing. Even too obvious.
Start here. The key player in this saga wasn’t on the ballot: mayor Michael Smith.
First, gut emotions influence hidden political moves. Smith had an outsized dislike of councillor Mary-Ann Booth. Several sources replace “dislike” with a four-letter word. Agent r7Nwe5 claimed to have heard Smith apply the h-word to Booth within her hearing.
Smith was quoted that Booth had been running for mayor “for seven years” – Smith’s tenure in the office. Hardly a friendly comment. (Other sources say Booth’s campaign began two years ago.)
Second, and arguably the decisive factor in the Oct. 20 elections: Early this year, before his two acclaimed mayoral terms ended, Smith was nudged: Would he run for a third?
Smith parried by evoking Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s legendary “walk in the snow” while he weighed resigning as prime minister (he did). Smith also quoted the advice of his left-wing opposite, Burnaby mayor Derek Corrigan: Don’t be a lame duck. Don’t say you’re quitting till you quit. (Five-term Corrigan ran for a sixth. And lost.)
One insider’s certainty, early on: “Smith’s already decided. He won’t run.”
Booth, her tight agenda not to be derailed by a lousy newspaper snoop, was silent when I emailed her about strong rumours she sought the mayoralty – confirmed a week or two later, on April 13, her machine well-oiled and a list in hand of WV Top People solicited to support her. Christine Cassidy, a council dissident from Smith’s embrace of high, wide and some thought unhandsome developments, announced July 27.
A safe bet: Smith began seething on the sidelines. Two women candidates. He didn’t like either.
And Mark Sager? He entered Sept. 12 – two days before nominations closed. Signing his nomination papers: Michael Smith. Sager, reliable keeper of the Smith flame?
Timing.
Former mayor and boy wonder of WV politics, Sager, now a mature 60, had plenty of savvy, deep local roots, and, cool and confident, won an early CBC Radio bout with his opponents. But Sager had come late to the party.
He and Booth appealed to much the same constituency. And Booth had – maybe indeed years ago – locked it up. Sager personally wooed some Boothers to defect to his team. A hard sell. A probably typical Booth supporter stood by the adage that you go home with the same guy/girl who brung you.
The election had its twists. The hearts of the ABC group – Anyone But Cassidy – must have throbbed when her erstwhile ally, Coun. Peter Lambur, unexpectedly yoked his campaign with a delighted Sager. The group of four, whom David Marley and Jean Lewis couldn’t get to coalesce, came together as a campaign team – and also late allies of Sager.
As seamless as Booth’s campaign was, it was surprising that at the Chamber of Commerce-sponsored meeting she read her well-crafted speeches. One observer claimed she read her answer to an ostensibly randomly selected written question. Cynics abound.
Timing. Allows planning – the long game.
The great What If – equally unprovable or undisaprovable, thus beloved of media thumb-suckers and historians mulling the young barons’ role in the Magna Carta: What if Smith had run again? Or announced retirement earlier, giving Sager more running room? Could Sager have then closed that tiny 21-vote gap with Booth? Would a month-longer campaign have changed anything? And why did Smith, not Sager, launch, with failed council candidate Jim Finkbeiner, the failed recount bid?
If the election is seen as a proxy vote for Smith’s seven years in high office, the now ex-mayor won a bell-ringer of an endorsement. Booth and Sager, both broadly “pro-development,” split 75 per cent of the 11,818 votes cast for mayor.
Arguably that was overwhelming vindication of Smith’s record, especially his Grosvenor waterfront and Park Royal shopping centre negotiations. Booth’s sentiments were plain on both, but she recused herself on Grosvenor because her lawyer husband worked on the Grosvenor deal. Sager, who has steered big North Shore projects as a lawyer, had nuances of differences.
(During the campaign, longtime Coun. Bill Soprovich ruefully referred to how “I got my butt kicked” for yielding to crushing pressure to cast the decisive vote for Grosvenor.)
The lower and slower-growth candidate, Cassidy, never got the traction or media profile of the well-heeled top two. Shake of the head: 61 per cent of the 30,761 qualified to vote, didn’t.
The voters’ message won’t be lost on WV’s political class, its elite, its town-hall high bureaucrats, and multimillion-dollar circling developers: West Van is (still) open for business.
The new council’s inauguration last week – I played hooky, tired and leery of parking – was celebratory, and Mayor Booth’s speech not only gracious but (here’s a departure!) she had canvassed each member of the new council for any ideas they wanted to contribute to it.
Coun. Craig Cameron – a Booth backer, to be sure – detected a new temperature, indeed a whole new climate in the chambers. Enjoy the honeymoon. Safe to say: Michael Smith won’t.
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