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Plenty of interesting things seen and heard
Published 11:11 PDT, Tue October 23, 2018
Last Updated: 2:12 PDT, Wed May 12, 2021
People tend to let their hair down on election
night, and being a fly on the wall—or in this case a reporter tasked with
covering a big party’s headquarters—is often fascinating.
It was in May of 2013 when a young volunteer
drove up to MLA Linda Reid’s campaign headquarters at Garden City Centre in his
sparkling clean yellow Lamborghini, adorned by an N sticker.
But it’s not just observations, but
conversations, that can make for an interesting evening.
BAD O-MAN?
It was a bad omen for Andy Hobbs around 9:53
p.m. Saturday. He was exactly 444 votes behind Michael Wolfe, who at that time
sat in eighth place.
Four sounds like the Chinese word for death,
and is considered bad luck.
So how did Hobbs react to the observation?
“I’m a dead man walking,” he chuckled.
INVISIBLE MAN
Jason Li ran with Richmond’s highest profile
party, Richmond First, but ended up being a bit of an enigma wrapped up in a
riddle.
Despite being surrounded by veteran
politicians, Li was never really engaged with the election, failing to respond
to The Richmond Sentinel’s candidate questionnaire, despite receiving multiple
time extensions. He also didn’t participate in The Sentinel’s Facebook Live
interviews, which saw the vast majority of candidates (54 out of 62) take
advantage of the three-minute interviews. In fact, he didn’t fill out the
questionnaire by The Richmond News either.
What he did do was show up Saturday night at
Richmond First’s campaign headquarters, and look for the results on the
projection screen.
He shouldn’t have been surprised by what he
saw: his bid for a seat on the Richmond Board of Education fell far short.
He finished 24th in a 26-person race,
receiving just 5,139 votes, more than 6,000 votes behind his Richmond First
colleague, Norm Goldstein, who won the seventh and final spot on the board to
return to the position he last held following the 2011 election.
BREAKING THE BOREDOM
Michael Wolfe’s young niece and nephew
slumped in boredom at a long table with toys and games. Later, as the crowd
thinned, while the results continued to trickle in, they skillfully rolled the
length of the room in their heelies, their shoe’s bright lights adding a
festive note to the Richmond Curling Club.
ANTI-SOGI FEARS
The first set of results on election night can
often be misleading.
One trustee expressed relief that that was
the case.
Had the initial numbers held true, there
might have been at least two members on the Richmond Board of Education who ran
on an anti-SOGI platform.
In fact, only Richard Lee who suggested he
was anti-SOGI, is on the board.
FAMILY AFFAIRS
Running for office is a family affair in
Richmond.
Niti Sharma’s sister flew in from India,
saying, “This might be the only chance I get to support my sister in an
election so I’m going to be here.”
Sharma’s husband, a UBC professor, worked
calmly in the background and kept an eye on their 14-year-old son.
“He found it all pretty boring here until he
found the pool table and someone who would play with him.”
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