'Make politics fun again': How COPE Vancouver elected every candidate it ran

While Vancouver Greens’ Pete Fry is now the mayor-elect of Vancouver and Conservative Lorne Doerskon is the premier-elect of B.C., another political party scored big in B.C.’s elections this past month: COPE Vancouver.

Vancouver residents elected COPE’s (Coalition of Progressive Electors) full slate of candidates on the Oct. 17 election, forming a left-wing and progressive supermajority alongside the Vancouver Greens and OneCity parties. 

Sean Orr, a COPE city councillor who was first elected in the April 2025 by-election, will return to council with over 83,000 votes — the most votes a Vancouver city councillor has ever received. He will be joined by Chloe Leslie, Solomon Yi-Kieran, and Devani Singh.

“It’s been great to see us unabashedly be socialist and stick to our values and campaign on those values. And that resonated with people,” Orr told Daily Hive Urbanized in an interview.

He pointed out a number of firsts the COPE party had achieved, including the youngest council candidate ever elected and the first candidate from a host nation elected to a Vancouver office.

“We smashed it out of the park,” Orr said.

Shawn Vulliez, COPE’s campaign manager, said that the party’s message resonated with voters because they want people who will fight for them who are “unapologetic and relentless.”

“We were very clear on the reason why we opposed Ken Sim, and we were kind of effectively tapping into what people were feeling about the direction of the city. He was very at odds with Vancouver voters’ values, and we kind of helped articulate that case,” Vulliez told Daily Hive Urbanized in an interview. 

‘Evict Ken Sim’

A pillar of COPE’s campaign was their slogan: “Evict Ken Sim.” It became ubiquitous around Vancouver, with stickers slapped onto things like pedestrian crossing buttons. 

In the summer of 2024, Vulliez said the COPE team had designed a number of buttons to test out while canvassing at places like farmers’ markets, including the “Evict Ken Sim” button.

“I think it was 10 or 12 buttons in the first order. But the first time that we were out canvassing, wearing Evict Ken Sim buttons, I think it was like an hour or so, and we’d given them all away. People really wanted them. We gave them off our shirts,” he said.

Over the last two years, he said they’ve given out between 15,000 and 20,000 of these buttons.

This slogan caught the attention of ABC Vancouver. During the municipal election campaign period, the party responded to it.

On Sept. 23, Sim shared a video on social media, reflecting on his childhood and saying that he had faced “real evictions and financial instability.” 

A whole campaign built around the slogan “Evict Ken Sim” to viciously malign him.

“Scapegoating the poor and homeless. You know, that was us.”

When Ken holds an “Evict Ken Sim” button, it hits hard. His family faced real evictions and financial instability over and over again, growing up as immigrants with little to their name.

And the family who lived through those struggles with him didn’t sign up for these personal attacks.

Ken got into politics so his kids, and other kids growing up in Vancouver, have a chance to build a future here.

That’s why safety and affordability are at the heart of ABC Vancouver’s campaign.

The full change we all wanted hasn’t happened yet. There is still more work to do.

The Public Safety Plebiscite is the next step on safety: stronger City laws against open-air hard drug use and a call for secure medical treatment, including voluntary and 100+ involuntary care beds.

On affordability, it means a 0% property tax increase, help for families and a thriving economy where people can earn enough to get by and build a future here.

Real change takes leadership that can face difficult battles and even brutal personal attacks that hit closer to home than you would ever want and keep going.

Because Vancouver is worth it.

#ABCVancouver #PublicSafety #Affordability

— Mayor Ken Sim (@KenSimCity) September 23, 2026

Vulliez said that he had never dreamed that he would “get to see Ken Sim sadly looking at the button,” when they first designed it in 2024.

“That was one of the best things that they could have done for us over at ABC. We joked before that Ken Sim is one of our best organizers,” said Vulliez. 

Vulliez — who said that he does not believe Sim’s video was sincere — was off work on the day it was published. He was taking his two kids to the pool.

“My phone started blowing up — that there was this incredible video that Ken Sim had released.”

As he was going into the pool to go swimming with his kids, he pulled it up and quickly cut it into a “Donate to COPE” ask.

https://t.co/WUE3Pk6JWP

— COPE: Coalition of Progressive Electors (@COPEVancouver) September 23, 2026

“I try to not give advice to my opponents in general or reveal the secrets of the trade to people who might fight back, but ‘Evict Ken Sim’ was the ballot question this election,” Vulliez said. “And to have your candidate forlornly staring at your opponent’s ballot question in a piece of communications was an exceptional flub. And they had many flubs this campaign, but that one was really special.”

“It made my life,” he said.

The 2025 by-election

Vulliez said that COPE had a lot of energy following the by-election in 2025 that saw COPE councillor Sean Orr get elected.

Vulliez said that Orr is an authentic, honest person who speaks his mind, and is known outside of running for office. He was also working as a dishwasher when he first ran for office.

“As Vancouver residents, we can see ourselves in him.”

Further, Vulliez added that Orr has “been working really, really hard in City Council.”

The city councillor has introduced motions like asking City staff to work with TransLink to try to create a low-income public transit pass, increasing the empty homes tax, and a proposal to shift more of the property tax burden onto higher-valued properties and/or non-resident investors. 

“He was able to pull off both blocking ABC proposals that were bad or amending them to be better. He was able to pass motions that were impactful and rally people. You know, we had 600+ speakers against Ken Sim’s [2026] budget,” Vulliez said.

Vulliez added that politics can feel far away, but Orr invited people in.

“Sean, as a city councillor, has kind of invited people to be part of something. It’s us the dishwashers, it’s us the regular people of the city — not just standing up to Ken Sim but standing up to a political system that’s selling us out.”

“And then he’s just — he’s a cool guy. He’s cool. So I think that helps.”

Orr’s work has paid off, given that he received over 83,000 votes on Oct. 17. The city councillor told Daily Hive that the results feel like “validation” of his hard work. But he also said that he feels a “weight.”

“There’s that sense of like, ‘Okay, I have to get down to work and stay true to my values, but also represent the entire city,’” Orr said.

‘Make politics fun again’

Since 2024, COPE has been organizing and building a community through activities like hosting bi-weekly pub nights. Further, Vulliez said they built momentum after their by-election victory, with many people staying involved after volunteering in 2025.

Vulliez said they had between 1,300 and 1,400 volunteers who came out to do at least one thing one time, including canvassing, door knocking, and delivering signs.

Orr added that part of their effort was to “make politics fun again.”

“Making politics exciting and engaging young people again, making city politics relevant again. And we worked on that for a long time. It wasn’t just this election,” Orr said.

This was also a key part of their social media strategy, which was a big aspect of how COPE connected with voters.

Vulliez said that they were aware that many people are engaged in politics at the federal or provincial level, but not necessarily with municipal politics.

They decided to give information to people to make them feel confident about civic politics, and to educate in a way that would help people feel inspired to be curious and more informed about what’s happening in the city.

He added that COPE’s videos were candidate-led, with candidates talking about issues and platform promises they were excited about.

“When someone’s talking about something that they really care about, it’s infectious. We try to train our volunteers that way as well to identify what it is that motivates them and excites them, and have that be the base of their conversation of talking to people,” Vulliez said.

One of Vulliez’ favourite videos was one where Sean Orr investigated ABC Vancouver signs popping up at empty properties.

“When we got this tip, we started looking into it on the team and kind of building up our research, and we found tonnes of stuff […] But we were all kind of enthralled with this idea that empty homes are voting for ABC.”

He said the performance of the video was “unreal,” with over a quarter million views across platforms.

“It just turned out really well. Sean’s presentation was really strong, and there’s kind of this sense of like an investigation, bringing people along with like we’re learning this with you.”

Expanding their base

In the 2025 by-election, Vulliez said that they focused on turning out the vote in neighbourhoods they “knew were at odds with Ken Sim.”

“But in the general election, we spread out quite a bit more, and we found basically everywhere we went, we were finding supporters.”

He said there were different levels of “intensity,” depending on the neighbourhood.

“Sean Orr can’t walk down Commercial Drive without having a bunch of conversations and pats on the back,” Vulliez said. 

But they also found that they had support in neighbourhoods like Marpole, Kitsilano, YaleTown, and Gas Town.

Working with the other progressive parties

The three progressive parties in Vancouver politics — the Greens, OneCity, and COPE — all decided to come together prior to the election to avoid voter confusion and splitting the vote.

All three of the left parties had mayoral candidates: OneCity selected William Azaroff, the Vancouver Greens chose Pete Fry, and COPE picked Stephanie Allen.

But the three parties agreed to limit the number of candidates they’d run to reduce competition among left-wing/progressive-leaning candidates and improve their chances of getting elected.

Among the three mayoral candidates, they agreed to engage in a good-faith effort to determine which one would be the best to compete. In early September, Allen dropped out of the race.

“We wanted to put the interests of the city first,” Vulliez said. “So we started planning how we’re going to start executing Plan B, which is to run a strong campaign without a mayor. And to Stephanie’s credit as well, she stayed really heavily involved. Even to this day. She’s still working with our city council candidates, and she’s involved in the party. And for her, it was always about the movement and the long haul.”

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