This is the first time in 60 years no one from the Richmond Citizens’ Association (RCA) has been elected to city council.
It’s a far cry from the 1980s when the mayor and seven out of the eight city councillors belonged to this formerly NDP-affiliated civic party.
Bob McMath was the first RCA council member, explained long-time city councillor Harold Steves, and he himself was an RCA councillor for more than 50 years.
The left-leaning civic party consistently had representation on Richmond city council over the past six decades.
At some point, however, there was in-fighting within the RCA ranks and it split off into three factions, the rump RCA, RITE and another group that then dissipated, Steves explained.
In the 2018 election, Kelly Greene and Steves were the only RCA councillors elected, but Greene left to run provincially two years into her term, leaving Steves as the lone RCA councillor.
In Saturday’s election, RCA ran four candidates – Jack Trovato, Keefer Pelech, Mark Lee and Fipe Wong - but none of them were elected. Steves didn’t run for re-election.
Steves said there were a few “mistakes” the party made this time round, firstly, their signs weren’t very clear and secondly, they should have promoted candidate Jack Trovato more as he came close to winning in 2018.
And, further, the fact there wasn’t any big divisive election issue helped elect the incumbent councillors, Steves explained, unlike in 1980s when the community rallied to save the Terra Nova Lands for agriculture and booted out the entire city council, electing eight RCA candidates to council.
“There were just too many good people running (this time),” he said. In fact, Steves himself supported independent candidate Evan Dunfee and RITE’s Laura Gillanders, although he had signs for RCA as well on his lawn.
In the 2018 election and this Saturday’s election, RITE and RCA came together to support each other, running joint ads.
Steves, however, didn’t support RITE’s mayoral candidate John Roston, this election, rather he threw his support behind incumbent Mayor Malcolm Brodie.
While none of the RCA candidates were elected, RITE Richmond gained one more city council member, Laura Gillanders, who joins re-elected RITE Couns. Carol Day and Michael Wolfe.
Steves isn’t on the executive of the RCA, but he thinks it might be time for RCA and RITE to officially join forces again.
The chair of RCA’s executive, Colleen Glynn, personally thinks it would be good to have only one “progressive” party in Richmond, but she said that’s not necessarily the opinion of the RCA executive.
There would, however, have to be changes to how things are done if RITE and RCA officially came together, Glynn added, like allowing the membership to vote to choose its candidates, something RCA does. (The Richmond News has reached out to RITE to ask how they select their candidates.)
In 2021, the BC NDP cut its affiliations with municipal parties, Glynn explained, and, therefore, RCA is no longer affiliated with the party.
Following the election loss for RCA, Glynn said RCA will be looking to bolster its membership and do “a lot of things” to regroup.
