Bob Mackin
Bremner (lower right) celebrates nomination with Marissen (second from right, back row) from the front page of South Asian community newspaper Sach Di Awaaz.
Mark Marissen’s bid to gain control of the NPA board was thwarted.
The party with the monogrammed grape logo held its last pre-election annual general meeting Nov. 28 at the Hellenic Community Centre. The meeting featured an election for eight seats on the board of directors.
Seven of the eight were snagged by members of a small business slate associated with Glen Chernen, the former Cedar Party leader who lost the NPA by-election nomination to Hector Bremner.
Marissen, the BC Liberal strategist who is ex-husband of ex-premier Christy Clark, was behind BC Liberal lobbyist Bremner’s successful, but unimpressive, campaign to become city councillor in October. He is now running rookie MLA and ex-Lawson Lundell lawyer Michael Lee’s bid for the BC Liberal leadership.
Those ousted from the board include past-president Carling Dick and directors Peter Labrie and Lianne Rood.
Dale Steeves, husband of rookie school board trustee Lisa Dominato, also didn’t make the cut.
Elected to three-year terms were: David Mawhinney (nightclub operator); Franco Peta (salon owner); Federico Fuoco (restaurateur); Eli Konorti (management consultant); and incumbents Greg Baker (2014 city council candidate and son of longtime councillor Jonathan Baker) and Terry Yung (police officer and husband of park board commissioner Sarah Kirby-Yung).
Glen Chernen (Twitter)
Commercial appraiser Michael Lount won the two-year term seat.
Restaurateur Marinos Anagnostopoulos was the only unsuccessful member of the slate. Results for the under-40 seat may be contested, based on the age of some voters.
A hot potato may be waiting for the new board at its first meeting. A source told theBreaker that expenses for Bremner’s by-election campaign exceeded $100,000 and some of the claims may not be approved.
Neither the NPA nor Vision Vancouver responded to repeated requests from theBreaker to voluntarily release their unaudited lists of donations before the Oct. 14 by-election.
In 2014, all parties released their unaudited donors’ lists before the general election. The deadline for audited campaign finance reports from the Vancouver by-election to be submitted to Elections BC is Jan. 12.
The NDP government moved this fall to ban corporate and union donations to municipal parties, and cap donations at $1,200 year.
Oct. 20, 2018 is general election day for local governments across B.C.
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