William Azaroff

Pete Fry's the one.

And then William Azaroff, the One City mayoral campaign, who had declared even before Pete Fry, but never really got a lot of traction.

In the polls that came out, it was pretty low down there.

It first said, oh, no, I'm going to stay in the race.

Yep.

So Pete Fry is a Green candidate.

Pretty amazing.

First formal Green, uh, mayor of a city, I think.

[laughs]

Yeah, really, really happy to see the good news.

I think it's really interesting that it, it did, it didn't start out with, um, you know, all of the, the, um, left to center left candidates, um, making these decisions to make sure that, um, there, there wouldn't be, uh, competition amongst them so as to split the vote and have Ken Sim come up with the win.

Um, there was actually, there had to be some Uh, it seems pretty clear that there had to be some negotiation and some, um, discussion about a particular candidate d- that's dropping out.

But both of these polls have put Sim within striking distance of Pete Fry.

So with the left's consolidation around green candidate Pete Fry, William Azaroff dropping off for one city, Stephanie Allen dropping off for Cope, It seems like it's fries to lose, but it is still turnout can really decide things in local elections.

And Ken Sims banking on his stupid referenda to torque the right voters to the polls for him to try to hold on for another four years.

speaking of those referendum vote no on them they're bad like a very cynical ploy to drive people to the polls i think that like the people who are going to vote for colleen hardwick are going to vote for colleen hardwick for the people for whom ken sim has been too left-wing i don't know that we can reach them and i don't know where we'd pull them if we did I do want to say a token of thanks to a stalwart of this podcast over the years, Rebecca Bly, whose campaign is not going to win.

Then, uh, as these things do turn, OneCity decided not to run a mayoral candidate after all.

Azaroff pulled out in favor of Pete Fry.

And Amanda Burrows was the woman on the spot when, um, they needed someone to fill the NDP vacancy left by the death of Joan, uh, Joan Phillip.

Right.

Sometimes a defeat is good news.

I think, um-

Has Saanich South become a swing riding? Hey, Richard Zusman said on this podcast that William Azaroff was the guy to watch.

I know.

How is that race shaping up now?

Well, there was a poll released just last week that shows the Green candidate, Pete Fry, jumping into quite a commanding lead after COPE and OneCity candidates for mayor Stephanie Allen and William Azaroff of OneCity dropped out of the race and threw their support to Pete Fry for mayor.

So Fry went from 38% all the way up to 59% approval, uh, among decided voters, while the incumbent, Mayor Ken Sim, went down from 33% down to 24%.

Colleen Hardwick of TEAM and Kareem Allam of the Vancouver Liberals are at 11 and 10% respectively, with, uh, Rebecca Bligh of Vote Vancouver stuck way down at, uh, 5%.

It didn't look like it was gonna happen.

William Azaroff wanted to stay in the race.

Stephanie Allen from COPE left the race.

But, uh, eventually Pete Fry was given the, uh, the nod to go ahead with, uh-