“In politics, people talk about ‘game-changing’ moments,” says the NDP’s Joe Cressy, sitting at the edge of the stage in a Bathurst-and-College nightclub shortly after conceding defeat in the Monday, June 30, Trinity-Spadina by-election.
“Rarely are they real game-changing moments too often it’s just a term that’s tossed around. Adam’s entry into the race was a game-changing moment.”
Few are surprised by the result. Adam Vaughan, running for the Liberals, has taken Trinity-Spadina with 54 per cent to Cressy’s 34.
Even to those at Cressy’s election-night party at Ryze, the outcome is a disappointment but not an unexpected one.
“Literally overnight, 15 points turned,” Cressy says of the polls following Vaughan’s mid-April entry into the race. “When you stacked me up against any Liberal candidate, we were looking very strong, and Adam turned it.”
As recently as two and a half months ago, when Cressy strode into the auditorium of the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre to accept his party’s uncontested nomination, it appeared he’d have the easiest route to Parliament of any NDPer in recent memory. Olivia Chow had held the Commons seat from 2006 until she stepped down to run for mayor in mid-March, and Cressy – who’d managed her very successful 2011 campaign – was understood to be the designated successor in the by-election she triggered.
But Chow’s succession plans failed once before: when she resigned from city council ahead of her 2006 federal run, she wanted her Ward 20 seat to go to Helen Kennedy, her NDP-backed former assistant. Yet the orange machine seemed caught off guard by the strength and popularity of then Citytv reporter Vaughan, who in November that year won handily with 52 per cent of the vote to Kennedy’s 35.
Vaughan’s name recognition, public profile and popularity in the area have only grown since, and were obviously the largest factors in his victory. But among those at Ryze, another theme emerges: that Vaughan could just as easily or should have run for the NDP instead.
In a brief address preceding his introduction of Cressy, leader Thomas Mulcair mocks what he perceives as a dissonance between Vaughan’s values and those of his chosen party. “Mr. Vaughan ran a very good campaign,” he says. “One of the interesting things was he had a lot of progressive ideas, but they were NDP ideas, not Liberal ideas!”
Mulcair continues the backhanded praise: “We’ll see how that goes for him when he finds out that Justin Trudeau actually is in favour of Line 9 and Justin Trudeau does want the Keystone pipelines – things that the NDP is standing up against.”
In his concession speech, Cressy praises Vaughan for having “earned his standing in our community” despite the Liberals’ not having done so.
And speaking to NOW a few minutes later, Cressy puts it even more bluntly: “I think he shoulda run for the NDP, but he didn’t. And so we move forward.”
The nightclub, its windows open to the street, is unduly hot and sweaty, the air filled with complaints about just a single bartender on duty.
Gord Perks is smoking outside. He was elected to council at the same time as Vaughan and often worked closely with him. Their relationship was brotherly, with the affection and frustration that entails. Perks is also a fiercely loyal NDP member who ran for the party in Davenport in the 2006 federal election.
He says both Cressy and Vaughan have weaknesses to overcome (“Joe is new Adam tends to get into controversies he doesn’t need to get into”), but what settled it for him was that “Joe took the harder road. Joe decided to fight for his values and work for a party and a leader who stands up for people who need help. And Adam didn’t take that path.”
Perks blames the Liberals for “most of the problems we have here in the city of Toronto” – housing, transit, lack of real action on climate change – and is skeptical that Vaughan can bring his party in line with his own principles. “I don’t understand why you would run for a party whose values you need to change when you could run for a party whose values you already share.”
As the NDPers try desperately to rustle up a beer, the Liberals bask in their victory at Steam Whistle brewery. Across the street, the CN Tower glows red and white for Canada Day but might be read as joining the celebration for Adam Vaughan’s win. So many are.
Vaughan’s event has more suits and cigars than Cressy’s (as tends to be the case at their respective parties’ parties), but also a significant contingent of grassroots activists who might not normally associate themselves with any given partisan affiliation.
Reporting from Vaughan’s election-night shindig in 2006, NOW’s Glenn Wheeler wrote that you had to “pinch yourself to recall that this isn’t an NDP bash.”
This time, wall-to-wall Liberal signs and the presence of Justin Trudeau don’t allow for such ambiguity, but many of Vaughan’s supporters are the same.
Yvonne Bambrick, a prominent cycling advocate and coordinator for a midtown BIA, says, “Of all the people to replace Olivia, he’s got the most experience, and I trust him to bring that [urban] agenda to the table in Ottawa.”
Giving the Liberals a knowledgable voice on housing and transit (and other city issues Perks says they’ve historically harmed) is Vaughan’s stated reason for taking the red train to the capital. He likes that the party is open to him and his ideas.
“The Liberal party is the party that always finds a way to open the door a little wider, bring an extra chair to the table. It’s that kind of a party,” he says.
And the contention that his values are more consistent with where the NDP already is than where he would like the Liberals to go?
“I guess that’s changed,” he says, apparently considering his election some kind of alchemical event that itself alters the party.
“The Liberal party is the party that you’re gonna wanna vote for. You watch us.”
It’s not clear if he intends to echo Trudeau the elder, but it does suggest that alchemy could go both ways.
jonathang@nowtoronto.com | @goldsbie
