If you want to know whos really celebrating David Cadman being knocked off the COPE council nominations Sunday and Tim Louis winning, its the NPA.
Cadmans defeat means COPE gave up an almost sure bet on a council seat. And while Ellen Woodsworth will likely hang on, the young Filipino-Canadian activist R.J. Aquino who took the third available spot will have a harder time.
Now there are three open seats on councilCadmans, Visions George Chow who is leaving municipal politics and Suzanne Antons who is throwing herself on her NPA sword in a run for mayor. That increases the possibilities for the NPA.
To make matters worse, the COPE executive hates Louis. He can be disruptive and destructive. There was some relief earlier this summer when he failed to derail the deal COPE has with Vision to split the ballot and share the work and the costs in the upcoming election battle. They thought they were rid of him.
It was obvious the moment the results were announced Sunday that the partys staff was taken by surprise. As one young staffer said, This really throws a wrench into things. Now theyll have to deal with the distraction Louis will inevitably cause in their campaign.
Cadman is not completely guiltless in this. He simply believed his incumbency, his work to rebuild the party in the late 90s and his three terms as a COPE councillor would win the day for him at Sundays meeting. He aligned himself with Woodsworth and the two of them promoted the bright, young rising star Aquino. But aside from that, he rested on his oars.
To his political peril and the damage his defeat has caused his partys chances at the polls, Cadman was wrong.
What matters in nomination battles are bums in seats, as Cadman readily admitted as he sat alone at the front of what had been a packed auditorium while the winners were out in the hallway talking with the media. He was beaten by Louis and Aquino because they signed up more members and got them out to the meeting.
It also didnt help that it looked like Cadman cobbled together his nominator (COPE executive member Ian Mass) and seconder at the last minute. While most of the others were nominated by sitting politicians, including MLA Mable Elmore, who were influential and eloquent in their comments, Cadmans nominator carried limited weight in the room and stumbled through his speech.
Then there was the matter of the slate, particularly running with Woodsworth. Its a fact she asked the membership to support both Cadman and Aquino. But what nobody realized until that morning was that they would be out-foxed by Louis. Unbeknownst to Woodsworth and the rest, he included Woodsworth in his campaign literature distributed Sunday as part of his slate and used her coattails to help pull him across the line into second spot.
And what does this mean for the deal with Vision, which has been negotiated for the third election campaign now? Louis has been on the attack against Vision since they split from COPE in 2005. In fact, he was a candidate in the 2005 election when there was a deal for the two parties to work together and, as a number of people recall, he did his best to undermine Visions mayoral candidate Jim Green.
This time, he was required to sign a document committing him to work to elect both Vision and COPE candidates. Dont hold your breath.
Immediately on winning the nomination Sunday, he said that last time out COPE was the most efficient party in dollars spent per candidate elected, which ignored the fact that along with the $300,000 COPE put in the pot there was Visions approximately $2 million and the army of volunteers they assembled.
At this point, Vision heavies see Louis as mostly COPEs problem to manage, but a serious problem nonetheless. And as one put it: Lets face it, this is not good news.
Unless you are the NPA.
