Filmmaker, Activist Avi Lewis to run for federal NDP in BC riding
Quite the coup for Jagmeet and the federal NDP
https://www.straight.com/news/avi-lewis-declares-his-intention-to-seek-n...
Avi takes on Doug Ford
https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/politics/filmmaker-activist-avi-lewis-to-r...
Is Doug Ford running federally, in Vancouver, next election?
My hunch is that even though it is an affluent riding, Avi has a reasonable chance of winning the riding because it will be a 4 way race. Having Bowinn Ma and Avi Lewis representing the North Shore could help to turn politics on its head. People like Jenny Kwan, Don Davies, Gord Johns, Peter Julian, Jagmeet Singh, and John Horgan will be sleeping well tonite.
Education is power
https://www.shorelinebeacon.com/news/local-news/education-is-power-steph...
Stephen Lewis takes on big pharma
https://globalnews.ca/news/7635886/stephen-lewis-big-pharma/amp/
Big catch for Jagmeet.
Now what about Linda McQuaig?
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-avi-lewis-to-run-for-nd...
Management who support a unionized workforce
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200615005626/en/The-Leap-Worker...
My hunch is that even though it is an affluent riding, Avi has a reasonable chance of winning the riding because it will be a 4 way race.
To be competitive means taking votes from the Greens, turning it into a 3 way race. It'll take >30% to win.
The NDP came in fourth in this riding during the last election with only 14% and they have never broken 22% of the vote. In the last election it looks like they hardly even ran given they spent only $5,500 compared to over $100,000 by the Libs and Cons. Even the Greens spent $20,000 in the riding. The only way Avi wins is if the Green voters defect to his campaign. Then he can realistically hope to break 35% and maybe sneak up the middle in a three way race.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Vancouver%E2%80%94Sunshine_Coast%E2%8...
Doubt I can read the Globe and Mail stories behind their subscription wall. Other possible sources for credible news stories? I think this could help the NDP - here in Québec Naomi Klein is much better known that her husband, but these are also important issues here, such as the stupid, expensive and anti-environmental "third link" between Québec City and Lévis on the south shore.
Nothing in The Tyee yet...
Although it is not as well known I really liked one of the first things they did called, "the Take." I have a full sized poster of it that they signed that I bought years ago at a CCPA fundraiser.
The NDP came in fourth in this riding during the last election with only 14% and they have never broken 22% of the vote. In the last election it looks like they hardly even ran given they spent only $5,500 compared to over $100,000 by the Libs and Cons. Even the Greens spent $20,000 in the riding. The only way Avi wins is if the Green voters defect to his campaign. Then he can realistically hope to break 35% and maybe sneak up the middle in a three way race.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Vancouver%E2%80%94Sunshine_Coast%E2%8...
I agree. I hope he wins as he would improve the NDP green profile and platform but everything would have to go right for that to happen. Climbing enough from 13.89% to win is a very tall order, especially in a riding that includes the wealthiest community in Canada, West Vancouver. I would have preferred him to run in North Vancouver Seymour where Svend only lost by 3%. But who knows for sure. Nobody gave Jack a chance to win a riding in Quebec several months before the election. If I remember correctly the NDP won a couple of them.
But Lewis lives in Halfmoon Bay, in the riding where he is running and that's more than important. The Conservatives and the Liberals hopefully will go 50-50, and the real Greens will hopefully crossover, but not the extremist nutbars.
Isn't it strange that since they were born the Greens ran primarily against the NDP, and they also had their eyes fixated on Sea-to-Sky, but the NDP there may well eat the Greens' lunch. That would definitely be schadenfreude!
Candidates from every party run in ridings outside where they have lived. Singh did this too although he moved to the riding. Quite a few of the Quebec NDP candidates in 2011 did not live in the riding when they first ran and they still won.
The NDP came in fourth in this riding during the last election with only 14% and they have never broken 22% of the vote. In the last election it looks like they hardly even ran given they spent only $5,500 compared to over $100,000 by the Libs and Cons. Even the Greens spent $20,000 in the riding. The only way Avi wins is if the Green voters defect to his campaign. Then he can realistically hope to break 35% and maybe sneak up the middle in a three way race.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Vancouver%E2%80%94Sunshine_Coast%E2%8...
As you pointed out, West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast is usually a Liberal vs. Conservative race. It has historically been a Conservative stronghold, although the riding has become less conservative, resulting in Liberal wins in 2006, 2015 & 2019.
I hope the Avi Lewis run doesn't end up benefiting the Conservatives and tilting it back into their column. But it's also possible that a more high-profile NDP candidate could hurt the Greens.
Liberal talking points
Liberal talking points
I think you should report him for not following the NDP orthodoxy. I can just imagine what your politics would be like if you had been born into a right wing family instead of an NDP one.
The Leap Manifesto
This will be one of the key elections the NDP faces in a generation Will the party be able to halt the rise of the Greens?
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2021/05/23/this-will-be-one...
An interesting column:
Avi Lewis is the grandson of David Lewis, the architect of the survival of Canadian social democracy during the McCarthy years. Earlier, David defeated the Canadian Communists’ attempts to seize control of the party and the labour movement. Avi is also the son of Stephen Lewis, the leader who crushed the party’s flirtation with New Left delusions.
No wonder the Star likes him. They loved Layton, Mulcair, and Singh for their perceived ability to eradicate any semblance of left-wing policy from the NDP and turn it into an orange brand for neoliberalism. Now that the peasants are getting restless, the last best hope of Robin Sears, Brad Lavigne, Anne McGrath, and the other Orange Tories is that Lewis is as good as his father and grandfather at doing the same thing.
Avi Lewis should've run in Hamilton Mountain, a riding the NDP holds both federally & provincially - as its current MP Scott Duvall said he is not seeking re-election.
I don't have any inside information, but it wouldn't surprise me if members of the Hamilton Mountain NDP have more than one potential local candidate who they would prefer over Avi Lewis.
I don't have any inside information, but it wouldn't surprise me if members of the Hamilton Mountain NDP have more than one potential local candidate who they would prefer over Avi Lewis.
They don't - the only person contesting the nomination (so far) is former NDP MP Malcolm Allen (who used represent Welland) - this riding is wide open with no preferred candidate
Yet it is a safe NDP riding.
The NDP came in fourth in this riding during the last election with only 14% and they have never broken 22% of the vote. In the last election it looks like they hardly even ran given they spent only $5,500 compared to over $100,000 by the Libs and Cons. Even the Greens spent $20,000 in the riding. The only way Avi wins is if the Green voters defect to his campaign. Then he can realistically hope to break 35% and maybe sneak up the middle in a three way race.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Vancouver%E2%80%94Sunshine_Coast%E2%8...
I agree. I hope he wins as he would improve the NDP green profile and platform but everything would have to go right for that to happen. Climbing enough from 13.89% to win is a very tall order, especially in a riding that includes the wealthiest community in Canada, West Vancouver. I would have preferred him to run in North Vancouver Seymour where Svend only lost by 3%. But who knows for sure. Nobody gave Jack a chance to win a riding in Quebec several months before the election. If I remember correctly the NDP won a couple of them.
Avi's chances will be boosted immeasurably if Singh allows him to stand as an antiwar/anti-imperialist candidate and to make a direct appeal to those Green voters who are still disgusted by Annamie Paul's refusal to answer ANY questions on foreign policy during the leadership debate- a refusal which makes no sense at all, given that there essentially aren't any voters anywhere in Canada who have green values on environmental issues but insist that Canada take a militarist approach to the rest of the world- and also to the massive number of voters who would vote NDP in B.C. if only the party would stop going out of its ways to keep activists at a distance.
Avi can win the riding if he is allowed to speak truth to power, rather than being forced to do nothing but parrot meaningless, "focus-group" tested "talking points".