April 25, 2018 3:42 pm

Greens’ Adriane Carr calls on left-leaning Vancouver parties to back her for mayor

Carr has previously said she is "ready and willing" to run for mayor, but only if she has the support of the public and other parties.

Adriane Carr / Facebook

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It’s a sign that Vancouver’s sole Green Party city councillor could be inches away from jumping into the race for mayor.

Two-term councillor Adriane Carr has been publicly mulling a run for the city’s top job since the beginning of the year, but told Global News earlier this month that the party was still assessing potential support from both the public and the city’s other parties.

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A Research Co. poll conducted earlier this month suggested she could win the first half of that equation, and now the Greens are taking aim at the second.

In letters sent to Vision Vancouver, COPE and OneCity earlier this month, Carr has asked the parties to support her bid for mayor.

“I identified what that meant, which is that they would not run a candidate of their own, that they would not endorse nor support another mayoral candidate, so that I would be a mayoral candidate that they would support for the election,” she said.

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The letters go on to point to the Research Co. poll results, arguing that both Carr and the Vancouver Greens had an early lead in net voter support and thus she was best positioned to win as a progressive ‘unity’ candidate.

“Everybody knows that there are parties that share certain values, and goals around the city. They typically get called the progressive parties or the parties of the centre-left,” she said.

But while Carr argued in the letters that, if elected, she would be a collaborative mayor — she said she isn’t prepared to give up her party affiliation and would run as a Green.

Carr gave the parties until May 5 to make a decision, the day before the Vancouver District Labour Council meets to begin selecting a slate of progressive candidates to endorse for the Oct. 20 municipal election.

OneCity says it will not run a candidate for mayor but it’s still considering if it will endorse Carr.

Vision and COPE have also yet to decide.

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If Carr does throw her hat in the ring, she’ll enter an increasingly crowded field.

There are three people seeking the Non Partisan Association (NPA) nomination: Park Commissioner John Coupar, rookie councillor Hector Bremner and financial analyst Glen Chernen. The NPA will select its candidate May 29.

SFU professor and former Vision board member Shauna Sylvester is running as an independent.

And former Conservative Party MP Wai Young is also taking a shot at the job.

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Adriane Carr