Councillor Rebecca Bligh launches mayoral campaign and a new political party

In an early start to next year’s Vancouver municipal election campaign, current city councillor Rebecca Bligh has announced she’ll run for mayor, while launching a new municipal political party. 

Mayor Ken Sim is expected to run for Vancouver’s top job again in 2026, setting up a contest between the former colleagues. Bligh and Sim were elected together as ABC party members in 2022, but have become political rivals after Bligh was removed from ABC earlier this year.

Bligh, who now sits as an independent, is a credible candidate to challenge Sim, given her two terms of experience on council and role as President of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM). 

Sim’s former chief of staff Kareem Allam has said he’ll also be running for mayor under the newly formed Vancouver Liberal banner, while OneCity Vancouver, responding to Bligh’s announcement, said they’ll announce a mayoral candidate in the “coming weeks.” 

Bligh said her new party — Vote Vancouver — will focus on three things the city needs most: vision, trust, and service.

For Bligh, vision means long-term planning around tricky issues like housing and improving living conditions in the Downtown Eastside, while  “backing Vancouver’s innovators” to grow the economy. 

In terms of trust, Bligh said she would “rebuild real consultation so residents shape decisions,” work with the city’s integrity commissioner, and lead a council that works in public. The last two points are clear shots at the ABC party led by Sim. ABC has attempted to undermine the role and decisions of the integrity commissioner, who found Sim, ABC councillors (including Bligh), and ABC park board commissioners had breached open meeting requirements. 

The service aspect – which involves speeding up permitting, keeping taxes “reasonable,” and reviewing city services to keep costs down – sounds quite similar to ABC’s platform that was enthusiastically endorsed by the electorate in 2022. 

“I stand by most, if not all, of the platform that I ran on in 2022. I'm going to be the mayor that can actually deliver,” Bligh said, pointing to unfocused leadership by Sim as the problem. 

Vote Vancouver will be running candidates for city council, park board, and school board, Bligh said, but wasn’t ready to share any names. The party is asking potential candidates to put their names forward to represent the party and run for office in 2026. 

The timing of Bligh’s announcement was a surprise but the content was not. Rumours of Bligh’s mayoral campaign have been floating around essentially since she was booted from the ABC party in February.

In anticipation of a mayoral campaign, we’ve been working on a profile of Bligh with Denise Goodkey, one of our readers who is a former Prince George city councillor herself. Monday’s announcement has undoubtedly changed the context of that conversation. When Denise spoke with her in August, Bligh was non-committal about running, saying there were bigger problems to focus on. Those problems remain, but that hasn’t stopped Bligh from throwing her hat in the ring.

With that caveat in mind, let’s get to Denise’s interview, which includes a bit of extra context from me.

By Denise Goodkey

When I met Rebecca Bligh for coffee in August, she was coy when I tried to pin her down about her mayoral ambitions next fall. She called the then-rumour of her candidacy a reflection of Vancouver having a “small town, big city” character. 

“I haven’t ruled anything out,” Bligh said at the time, adding that a mayor needs to be a good listener, be open-minded to other people’s ideas, and have a strong work ethic. “It’s a lot of work. It’s totally doable, but it’s a lot of work,” she said, adding that the amount of time and effort that can go into the job is limitless if you really see yourself as being in service to others. 

“I know this seems like the time to be discussing [a mayoral run], but I think we have a lot of challenges to solve right now,” she said. 

“How do we make sure that Vancouver is a place where people can get their work done, raise their families, access housing, and enjoy the community? That’s what I’m focusing on right now,” Bligh said, emphasizing the need to improve housing affordability and make it easier for the city to come alive with events, business, and arts. 

Bligh was recently elected as President of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities at their annual meeting in June. Having attended many FCM meetings during my time on Prince George’s city council, I knew this was a huge deal. Although several Vancouver mayors have held that position at FCM, she is only the second Vancouver councillor in more than 70 years to achieve the honour of representing every municipal elected official in the country.  

Born in New Zealand, Bligh has lived in Canada since she was ten, and in Vancouver for more than 20 years. As a young adult she was a single mom and a renter. More recently, she and her partner, Laura bought a small townhouse condo, but Bligh said she has not forgotten the joys and sorrows of being a renter.

“What you see is what you get,” she said, when I asked about the “real” Rebecca. “Politics is fun, what are you talking about!” she said jokingly, in response to my question if she ever gets away and has fun. 

As Bligh explained it, a lot of her fun, relaxed time happens outside, whether it’s road cycling on her very fast bike, playing tennis, swimming, or walking the city’s greenways with her partner, Laura. Bligh is also a well-seasoned paddleboarder, and has an appreciation for opera, which she learned in New Zealand from her grandfather.

Bligh has worked for local businesses, including Providence Security, and eventually formed her own consulting firm, BLACKPiiN, which specializes in leadership development. That position led her to facilitate leadership training here and in Africa, where she worked with NGOs to bring education to rural parts of Ethiopia and sustainable farming practices in Mozambique.

Speaking of leadership, Bligh told me she wants to bring back pragmatic decision-making at City Hall, with a greater focus on outcomes and less time spent on ideology and theatrics. 

“I believe in cross-partisan collaboration and policy-making. When you’re putting sewers in the ground nobody cares about your views on geopolitical issues …if you are left or right. They just care if the sewer goes into the ground,” she said. 

Bligh’s “naive, perhaps” view when she ran in 2018 with the now-defunct Non Partisan Alliance (NPA) was that municipal politics should be non-partisan. When that perspective was challenged in 2019, Bligh quit the NPA to sit as an independent city councillor. Bligh left the NPA due to the “surge of far-right groups that had taken over the board and elected themselves to the executive,” she said, adding she could tell very quickly that their values did not align. 

Bligh was not alone in leaving the NPA. Councillors Lisa Dominato, Sarah Kirby-Yung, and Colleen Hardwick all left the party in 2021 over the board’s “secret backroom decision” in choosing a mayoral candidate for 2022. Bligh, Dominato, Kirby-Yung, and Sim – the latter a former mayoral candidate for the NPA – then all joined the newly-formed A Better City (ABC) party, and were elected in the 2022 election. 

Bligh said she and Sim were “getting along fine,” until Sim announced, without warning, that the city would no longer allow any net new supportive housing. “I found out essentially while he was making a speech in public,” Bligh said. 

Bligh said she had been working, with others to develop housing policies to address homelessness. When the surprise decision came down, she publicly expressed her confusion with the new policy and said it didn’t make a lot of sense. “The next thing I know they asked me to leave the party,” Bligh explained to me. 

“Time and again, Councillor Bligh has shown that she is not a core value fit with ABC Vancouver. Rather than working with caucus to find common ground and advance solutions, she has chosen to put her own views ahead of the collective work of the team,” ABC President Stephen Molnar said in a statement explaining Bligh’s dismissal at the time.

Bligh hasn’t been one to stay quiet when she feels something is amiss, whether that’s been because of diverging social views or policy positions. Now with Vote Vancouver, Bligh has her own party to put her priorities, policies, and leadership style on full display. What remains to be seen is if that’s something Vancouverites will vote for.