{"id":201565,"date":"2026-09-09T04:46:42","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T04:46:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/201565\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T04:46:42","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T04:46:42","slug":"vancouver-mayoral-candidate-william-azaroff-steps-down-making-room-for-the-greens-pete-fry-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/201565\/","title":{"rendered":"Vancouver mayoral candidate William Azaroff steps down, making room for the Green’s Pete Fry"},"content":{"rendered":"

William Azaroff has ended his mayoral campaign with OneCity Vancouver, concluding a dramatic week of discussions between the city’s three self-described “progressive” parties to align behind one candidate.<\/p>\n

In a media address on Tuesday, Azaroff said he heard “how scared people are of another Ken Sim and ABC majority,” and that he’s stopping his campaign so that Pete Fry of the Green Party would be the only progressive challenger in the race.<\/p>\n

“In order to get Ken Sim out, we have to unite behind a single progressive mayoral candidate,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Pete Fry [has] a commitment and a personal desire to bring competence and ethics back to the mayor’s office. He has witnessed and experienced firsthand the casual cruelty of Ken Sim and ABC during this term, and feels deeply that he must change that.”<\/p>\n

Following his remarks, Fry and Azaroff embraced, and the two posed for photos with Stephanie Allen, the former mayoral candidate for COPE Vancouver who announced her own departure from the race last Wednesday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

‘My heart kind of knew Thursday’<\/p>\n

In April, COPE, OneCity and the Greens agreed to limit the number of council candidates they would nominate and “engage in a good-faith effort to determine which progressive mayor is best suited to compete” in order to avoid vote-splitting.<\/p>\n

Polls conducted<\/a> by two different organizations in July and August suggested Fry \u2014 a city councillor for the last eight years \u2014 was well ahead of Allen and Azaroff, both of whom had no political experience and were best known for being non-profit housing executives.<\/p>\n

Hours after Allen’s departure from the campaign last Wednesday, Azaroff held a press conference where he said he was staying in the race, and argued only OneCity had the capacity to conduct a successful campaign against Sim and ABC Vancouver.<\/p>\n

“I don’t see another party with a kind of infrastructure we’ve built around money raised, doors knocked, volunteers gotten,” he said, adding that he would be talking to Fry in the days ahead.<\/p>\n

But Azaroff admitted that by the next day, he began realizing the difficulty in front of him with the Sept. 11 deadline to be on or off the ballot looming.<\/p>\n

“It started becoming really obvious to me what the dynamics were … and really, my heart kind of knew Thursday afternoon, but my brain decided yesterday.”<\/p>\n

Candidates look to unseat Sim<\/p>\n

Azaroff’s departure means there are now four candidates with significant municipal experience running to try and unseat Sim in October’s election: Fry, Coun. Rebecca Bligh of Vote Vancouver, former Vancouver councillor Colleen Hardwick of TEAM Vancouver, and former Sim campaign manager and chief of staff Kareem Allam with the Vancouver Liberals.<\/p>\n

In the hours after Azaroff’s announcement, both Allam and Hardwick issued statements, albeit with very different messages to OneCity supporters.<\/p>\n

“William and I don’t agree on everything. But there is a lot we do agree on,” said Allam. “I’m running because I think Vancouver needs a mayor who can bring people together across traditional political divides and build a broader coalition for change.”<\/p>\n

Hardwick said she’s in the race “because no one else is standing up for the residents of this city.”<\/p>\n

“No other party is offering the change that Vancouver desperately needs.”<\/p>\n

For his part, Fry said he was happy for the awkward pseudo-campaign between the Greens, OneCity and COPE to come to an end, allowing him to pivot to the general election.<\/p>\n

“I’m glad that I can now stand with my friends at OneCity, my friends at COPE, and affirm that we share those values,” he said.<\/p>\n

“There’s absolutely nothing stopping us from working together to achieve \u2014 within the limits of the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act, of course \u2014 a better city hall.”<\/p>\n

In a statement issued Tuesday, ABC Vancouver wasted no time criticizing Fry.<\/p>\n

“Pete Fry would take us backward and put our economy further at risk during this trade war, at a time when the average Vancouverite is wondering how to pay for groceries and protect their bank account,” reads a statement attributed to Sim and his party.<\/p>\n

“Pete Fry represents the same failed approach we’ve seen from the radical far left: higher taxes, no economic development, and experimental public safety and health policies that put our families and seniors at risk.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"William Azaroff has ended his mayoral campaign with OneCity Vancouver, concluding a dramatic week of discussions between the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":201566,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[6267,60898,3204,54702,8255,39077,95,39080],"class_list":["post-201565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vancouver","tag-city-councillor","tag-cope","tag-ken-sim","tag-mayoral-candidate","tag-pete-fry","tag-stephanie-allen","tag-vancouver","tag-william-azaroff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}