A peculiar progressive primary
A recent history of political brokerage in Vancouver
Since political parties first came into existence in the city of Vancouver, parties on both sides of the political spectrum have tried to consolidate support behind their candidates to avoid dividing their support. The whole reason the Non-Partisan Association existed for 85 years was to keep the right-wing of the city united to prevent left-wing candidates from getting elected.
One of the reasons the NPA was so successful was that its role was less of a partisan party and more as a brokerage group. People from different right-leaning organizations would put forward potential candidates and negotiate with the NPA on their overall platform. Once a slate and platform was determined, the groups would work together to get their team elected. With the resources of the wealthy and business community behind them, there was incentive for candidates to put aside their differences and work together as a team. For decades, this approach was successful at keeping the fragmented, in-fighting left-wing parties from gaining power in the city.
While the NPA did not win every election, this formula largely worked until the early 2000s. At the start of the millennium, the progressive parties tried their own hand at brokerage politics. In 2005, the Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE) and Vision attempted to negotiate an agreement for COPE to refrain from running a mayoral candidate in favour of Vision Vancouver’s Jim Green. Green narrowly lost by 3,747 votes to the NPA’s Sam Sullivan, in part because an independent named James Green received 4,273 votes. However, on council the seats were evenly split between the NPA (5) and the Vision-COPE alliance (4 and 1, respectively).
With Vision’s popularity much higher than COPE going in to the 2008 election, the parties agreed to unify support for Vision’s mayoral candidate — Gregor Robertson — in exchange for Vision not running full slates on council, school board and park board. COPE ran two candidates for council, five for school board and two for park board. The Green Party also agreed to come on board, forgoing all but a single candidate for park board — Stuart Mackinnon.
The agreement was a success electorally. The Vision-COPE-Green alliance won the mayor’s seat, nine of ten seats on council, six of seven on park board, and seven of nine on school board. Except for council, where Vision’s Kashmir Dhaliwal narrowly lost, it was COPE candidates who missed out on school board and park board.
If Vision hoped to be the left-wing brokerage party going forward, however, 2011 saw their first challenges. COPE signed another agreement, increasing their council slate to three but running one fewer for school board. However, a faction within COPE rejected the agreement and organized against it. The Greens rejected Vision’s offer to leave one park board seat aside for them again and pulled out of the agreement entirely.
By 2014, the group that had split from COPE because of the agreement had formed OneCity, with the intent of supplanting Vision as the progressive standard-bearer. COPE refused a new agreement with Vision and chose to run a mayoral candidate and full slate. The Greens’ membership voted unanimously to reject any coalition or electoral alliance with another civic party or parties. While Vision retained control of council, the NPA came back to win a majority on the park board, and the school board resulted in an even split between Vision and the NPA with the Greens’ Janet Fraser caught in the middle.
By the time a 2017 by-election came around, any hope of the progressive parties brokering a new agreement was gone. Vision, OneCity, the Greens, and a COPE-backed independent all ran against each other, allowing the NPA’s Hector Bremner to win with only 27.8% of the vote.
In order to avoid another split, the Vancouver and District Labour Council attempted to step into the brokerage role between the progressive parties. The VDLC held negotiations between Vision, COPE, the Greens and OneCity to limit the number of candidates each party would run, and endorsed an independent mayoral candidate. The parties agreed that OneCity would run two candidates, COPE would run three candidates, Vision would run five candidates and the Greens would run three. The Greens immediately broke their word and announced four candidates for council.
In the end the Greens won three seats on council, OneCity and COPE won one each, and the rest were won by the NPA. Vision was wiped out.
However, the NPA had largely lost their positioning as the right-wing brokerage party. Instead, they began to pursue far-right culture war issues. The Board nominated Park Commissioner John Coupar as their mayoral candidate, to the surprise of their own councillors. In the lead-up to the 2022 election, the former NPA mayoral candidate Ken Sim recruited multiple also-former NPA candidates to run with his new party, A Better City.
While the VDLC endorsed candidates in the 2022 election, no agreement was reached between the parties to limit their number of people running. For the ten seats on council, the Greens ran five, OneCity ran four, Mayor Kennedy Stewart’s Forward Together ran six, COPE ran four, and Vision ran three candidates. That’s 22 candidates for 10 positions. In the end, ABC swept council and won seven seats — every candidate they ran. The NPA was wiped out on every level.
The “people’s primary”
With no organization with the clout to play broker on the left, the parties have toyed with a different approach — a US-style primary.
Primaries run similar to a political party nomination, but are open to registered voters. Depending on the system, the primary may be open to all voters or only people registered to vote for one party. The idea is to unite around a single candidate for each side of the political spectrum so that when the election takes place the field is already narrowed down to only two options.
COPE first began referring to the early days of the mayoral race as the “People’s Primary,” with the implication that candidates who announced their intentions would later drop out to unify around one candidate.
The Greens, on the other hand, preemptively called a Special General Meeting to endorse Pete Fry for mayor or council, effectively preventing any kind of nomination contest. However, the Greens did acknowledge “what’s been variously dubbed a progressive primary, or the People’s Primary” in welcoming OneCity’s mayoral nominee to the race. In a nod to Fry potentially dropping out, the party mentioned “the clear intention to ultimately unite behind one challenger capable of defeating Ken Sim in October.”
OneCity took a completely different approach — an ultimatum. Instead of competing with each other over the next few months to see which candidate takes off, William Azaroff publicly announced a series of demands on the other parties to create a formal primary process.
The demands included:
Only party members as of February 17th, 2026 are eligible to vote (meaning no party can sign up new members).
Membership lists will be verified by an external, independent third party auditor, something that the BC NDP once unsuccessfully tried to get the BC Greens to do.
Parties will share costs of the contest evenly.
COPE and the Greens had to respond by Friday, February 20th.
This offer was treated as largely absurd. OneCity had just completed a competitive nomination race for mayor where they signed up thousands of members. COPE has not yet run their nomination, and the Greens appointed Fry without a contest. Both parties combined likely do not have as many members as OneCity, and their memberships are not as engaged yet in the municipal election. The terms of the primary as proposed by OneCity would only have one outcome — OneCity would win and Azaroff would be the “unity” candidate.
COPE pointed out they had already put forward proposals that OneCity had not signed on to. The Greens decried the autocratic approach and rejected it outright. Political experts pointed out that good-faith negotiations and strong-arming the other parties via press conferences do not go together well. Azaroff’s heavy-handed approach may have guaranteed that the progressive parties remain split.
It's possible OneCity’s proposal was meant as an opening offer for more negotiations. Or, perhaps it was intended to fail so they could argue no agreement was possible in the first place. Either way, the parties remain at a standoff regarding how many candidates they will each run and who they will support for mayor.
On the other hand, the right is also split. Ken Sim’s ABC party is also no brokerage organization, as evidenced by a councillor splitting off to form Vote Vancouver, his 2022 campaign manager recruiting former ABC park commissioners and a school trustee to run with the Vancouver Liberals, and a brutal 2025 by-election loss. Despite the goal of the “people's primary” being to defeat Ken Sim, neither Rebecca Bligh nor Kareem Allan are included.
The old tradition of brokerage between organizations to build a united slate appears to be a thing of the past. Instead, political coalitions seem to form and collapse, rising and falling between elections. Ultimately, it will be up to the voters to decide if one candidate deserves their support over another.
Perhaps, that is how it should be.
Vancouver 2026 Election Primer
Municipal elections are around the corner in British Columbia. The 2026 local elections will be held on October 17th in municipalities and regional districts across the province.
Great history as always Ryan but you missed the other big change from the Vision era to our current chaos era, which is the new campaign finance limits. Without the ability of any one party to amass an insurmountable war chest, these parties are much weaker institutions. That reduces the incentive for candidates to stick together vs starting a new movement. It also reduces the influence any party holds in negotiations. Vision had millions in the bank while OneCity has a tenth of that.
Ultimately, I think we're going to need to see electoral reform to make these weaker parties viable. That's ultimately what the OneCity primary amounts to - a French style runoff election (albeit with an initially limited franchise).