Adam Pankratz: Former Vancouver mayor says elections racist after Asian challenger won

Former Vancouver mayor Kennedy Stewart is up to his old habits: parading petty grievances around like serious issues. This habit is long past being tiresome and is completely unbefitting someone who held top job in our country’s third largest city. Sad though it may be, this is now the go-to leftist political playbook: righteous victory if you win, blame systemic discrimination if you lose. All this for an issue Stewart campaigned on in 2018 yet never bothered to act on once elected.

Stewart’s most recent salvo is to accuse Vancouver’s electoral system of racism. The details are so far not fully known but what Stewart does make clear is his conclusion that at-large systems, where councillors are elected citywide instead of by ward or district, “have been found to be systematically racist.”

Citing as yet unnamed cases from the United States, Stewart has launched a full broadside of racist and “hyper-colonial” accusations at the system and its mayor, Ken Sim. Sim, who was last year elected in a landslide is Vancouver’s first mayor of Asian descent, and his slate won seven of 10 council seats. “White incumbent mayor declares system ‘racist’ after defeat by Asian mayoral candidate” is an interesting take by Stewart to say the least.