OneCity mayoral candidate staying in race amid calls for progressive unity

VANCOUVER — OneCity mayoral candidate William Azaroff has declared that he will not be following COPE hopeful Stephanie Allen's lead and suspending his campaign so progressives can unite around a single candidate.

He argued that he, not Vancouver Greens' Pete Fry, would be the best choice to lead that movement and defeat Mayor Ken Sim.

Fry has maintained that he's "100% in it to win it."

"I must admit, I'm bit disappointed in that," Azaroff said of those remarks during a press conference at his campaign office on Main Street. "The reality is Pete, Stephanie, and I talked on Monday, Pete and I are planning to go for a walk and chat tomorrow — there are conversations still to take place, and for Pete to circumvent all that and make that statement, I find that disappointing."

Azaroff acknowledged that Fry has more "name recognition," but argued that "this is a 5,000 metre race" and that the Greens were only ahead after the first 150 metres.

"This is about leadership, right?" he said. "And it's about the party best equipped to prosecute a campaign against the mayor and to defeat them — and so those are the things I'm really focused on."

Azaroff said a progressive split is "not the scenario [he's] aiming for," but that the risk of division is not limited to his side of the aisle.

"We know what's best for Vancouver is not to split the vote amongst progressives," he noted. "The reality is because of Ken Sim, we're seeing to split all over the place. People are focused very much on the progressive split, but there's a split every which way, because people are desperate for a change."

Mayoral candidates have until 4:59pm on September 11 to submit their papers. The election will be held on October 17.

Watch the full press conference here: