Sam Sullivan, Mayor of Vancouver, BCVancouver, BC mayor, Sam Sullivan, lost the nomination to run again on his party's ticket last weekend and apparently has inspired a kind of hatred rarely seen against a prominent disabled person.
In a story in The Globe and Mail, a key adviser of the mayor says, "The hatred for Sam is amazing. I've talked to lots of people about why and no one can put a finger on it. It's not his handling of a specific issue or issues, it's more ephemeral than that. They just don't like him - period."
The Globe and Mail writer concludes: "As smart, imaginative and thoughtful a person as he is, he does not inspire, and, in fact, seems to have a governing style more grating than galvanizing, divisive than unifying."
Some criticized Sullivan for playing the "disability card" to win the election but then not having the goods to be an effective city leader.
Bob Rennie, a Vancouver real estate marketer and player in city politics, was an early critic of what he says was "the mayor's penchant for making everything be about his disability."
"In the end," Rennie said, "the mayor failed to show people he was more than that."
"I think his wheelchair got him there [the mayor's office]," Rennie said. "But it wasn't enough to keep him there."
