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With the exception of a six-year stretch in the 1980s, right-of-centre political parties ran Vancouver's governments for 116 years. That all changed in 2002, when the left-of-centre Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE) won nine of the 11 seats on city council, including mayor; seven of the nine seats on the school board; and five of the seven seats on the parks board.
Isn't that nice, you may say, but what does it have to do with Alberta teachers? COPE Chief Organizer Neil Monckton and COPE Director Norman Gludovatz attempted to answer that question November 15 when they shared their organization's strategies for recruiting and electing progressive candidates with delegates to the ATA's Political Action Seminar
Following the 1999 Vancouver civic elections, COPE set about creating a grassroots movement and developing a campaign infrastructure to achieve electoral victory in the 2002 elections. Strategies included identifying and recruiting high-calibre candidates, increasing the organization's membership, expanding its e-mail database, organizing conferences to assist in the development of policy and platform, and establishing election committees and fundraising. "We decided that winning was more important than just getting people in," Monckton explained.
The strategies proved successful. In addition to COPE's electoral victory, voter turnout increased from 37 per cent in 1999 to 51 per cent in 2002. "For those who believe democracy's a good thing, more democracy is better," said Monckton.
He pointed out that significantly more people vote for city council in Edmonton and Calgary than for the school board. In the 2002 Vancouver elections, the top school trustee candidate received almost as many votes as the top city councillor. "There's a lot to be gained here," Monckton stated. "If you shift the vote five or 10 per cent, you're going to win."
COPE also got a substantial boost from teachers. It determined that approximately 40 per cent of teachers support progressive candidates. With 7,000 members in the Vancouver Elementary School Teachers' Association (VESTA), that meant 2,800 potential supporters. A third-party phone bank called VESTA's members and identified COPE supporters for future outreach initiatives. "We were talking about something teachers cared about," Gludovatz explained. "In some cases, it made the difference of just getting [the candidates] over that little hump."
