Well, I didn’t see that coming — talking about Saturday’s civic election, of course.
Had a couple of our incumbents stepped down, I would have predicted (with 20/20 hindsight) Kelly Greene, Michael Wolfe or perhaps Andy Hobbs would have filled their shoes, and not necessarily in that order. But to unseat a sitting councillor as Greene and Wolfe have just done, is quite another matter.
So now the RCA/RITE coalition has four of the eight seats on council, with the other four coming from Richmond Community Coalition (Chak Au), Richmond First (Bill McNulty and Linda McPhail) and independent (Alexa Loo). Will we see radically different outcomes, or at least more robust debate? Will there be some swing votes, if so, who would they be? What will be the priorities?
These were some of the musings going on in the Richmond News boardroom as I spent election night with one of this city’s most notable political couples, Greg and Evelina Halsey-Brandt.
Greg was a Richmond city councillor in the 1980s, mayor of Richmond in the 1990s and MLA in the early 2000s, then back as a councillor for one last term before retiring from politics for good. Evelina was a city councillor through the 1990s and 2000s before retiring along with her husband prior to the 2014 election.
Who better to sit and chat civic politics with while watching the results roll in — however slowly. (See page 8 for what happened there.)
I understand in the Halsey-Brandt household, a scotch is in order on election night, win or lose. Unfortunately, being at the office, we had to settle for water-only, but that didn’t seem to dampen spirits as the pair offered insight and analysis into the various compaigns and issues at city hall.
Another thing you should know for all this to make sense, is that the Richmond News staff has gotten decidedly younger in the past year — young and more social media savvy. So, when we were planning our coverage, it was suggested we do Facebook Live posts throughout the night.
“Really, it’s super easy. It’s nothing,” I was assured.
Being easily pressured, I agreed and suddenly we were planning scripts, mapping out the itinerary and booking guests (that would be the amenable Halsey-Brandts) to sit in our “studio” while commenting live on our Facebook page.
If you happened to tune in, and a surprisingly good number of you did, you would have also seen our intrepid reporters, providing live updates from the various election night parties.
Granted, we’re not a TV studio and there were some glitches, but I like to think that was part of the charm.
Anyway, it was a fun night in terms of coverage, even if we were here until 2 a.m. And it was great to see a record amount of traffic on our website. But enough about us. The moment belongs to the candidates — winners and losers.
It’s a brave thing to put your name forward in the name of public service and for that we owe you deep gratitude.
