Atmosphere: Win or lose, COPE's spirits are high

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Submitted by Ian King on November 15, 2008 - 9:07pm.

In a plaza at the corner of Carolina and Broadway in Mount Pleasane, 200-plus dyed-in-the-wool lefties are partying it up at COPE's election night party. As the first results from the mayoral election came in, with Gregor Robertson leading Peter Ladner, the room was filled with polite but not owerwhelming applause.

Then came the news of council candidates David Cadman and Ellen Woodsworth both making the top ten with one-fifth of the polls reporting, and with that the celebrations. The unity option looked to pay off. COPE's contenders were surviving, and with that, so was the party and its party. 

It's a far cry from the massive celebration at Library Square in 2002, where hundreds of partisans created a deafening-at-times rumble as Larry Campbell led COPE to a near-sweep of the civic elections. That was six years and innumerable defections ago. What remains of COPE is the party's activist base, and it faced a choice: to run a big slate like a big party, or concentrate and get lected where it could.

Running a smaller slate in cooperation with Vision Vancouver and the Vancouver Green Party, COPE chose to not dilute its voter base and risk a shutout. So far, it seems to be working and it's a crew of happy COPEsters in Mount Pleasant tonight. Of course, it could be that the beer is flowing freely at $4.25 per, considerably less than at the other two election night bashes.