VANCOUVER—A city councillor who hoped to win his party’s nomination to run for mayor says he’s been rejected, alleging the board of the Non-Partisan Association was “stacked” against him.

Hector Bremner won a city council seat for the NPA in an October 2017 byelection. The public-relations executive and former B.C. Liberal staffer hoped to get the green light from the party to run as mayor in the upcoming elections.

In a Facebook post, Bremner accused the board of kneecapping his bid. He said another unnamed candidate had “stacked” the board, and that even though the NPA’s Green Light Committee agreed his name move forward, “the board rejected their advice.”

“My team has tried to do the right thing at every step to keep moving forward in a positive direction, and signed up the most members to the NPA of all of the candidates, with over 2,000 supporters,” Bremner wrote May 7.

But Gregory Baker, president of the NPA, disputed that version of events. He said the committee had serious reservations about Bremner, which the committee communicated to the board verbally.

“They discussed them at the board, and the board voted on them, and that was that,” he said.

Baker added that he did not take part in the process to approve Bremner to run in the byelection and declined to say what had changed since then.

Bremner’s rivals for the mayoral nomination were John Coupar, a park board commissioner; Ken Sim, an entrepreneur; George Steeves, an engineer; and Glen Chernen, an investment adviser who wants to end what he believes is the undue influence of real-estate developers on city hall.

Bremner said he’ll have more to say about his allegations Tuesday night. He did not respond to an interview request from StarMetro.

Chernen, Coupar and Sim were approved, while Bremner and Steeves were denied.

The NPA’s Green Light Committee, made up of three NPA board members and three others, is responsible for vetting all prospective candidates for council, mayor, school board and park board. New members have been coming on to the board, but that was common for the party, Baker said.

The approved mayoral candidates will be put to a vote of the party’s membership at the NPA’s mayoral nomination meeting on May 29. If Bremner decides to run for re-election as a councillor, he’ll have to go through a similar vetting process, Baker explained.

Supporters of Chernen are behind two conflict-of-interest complaints levelled against Bremner. Bremner’s firm counts among its clients several large real-estate development companies.

“There are some candidates that can’t be bought by property developers, that do have citizens’ best interests in mind, and I’m more confident in them than in Mr. Bremner,” Justin Fung told StarMetro in a previous interview.

Fung and Raza Mirza, both members of the citizens group Housing Action for Local Taxpayers, each filed a conflict-of-interest complaint against Bremner. Both had recently become members of the NPA — Mirza around a year ago, and Fung two months ago — and currently support Chernen.

The decision to reject Bremner didn’t sit well with Adrian Crook, a Vancouver resident and Bremner supporter who hoped to secure an NPA nomination to run for city council.

Calling the move “an undemocratic rejection of their own green-light committee’s recommendation,” Crook said the decision is making him rethink whether the NPA is the right party for him.

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Both Crook and Bremner have advocated relaxing zoning rules in single-family-home neighbourhoods to allow higher-density housing.

Clarification - May 10, 2018: This article was edited from a previous version to include when Raza Mirza and Justin Fung became NPA members. Mirza joined NPA a year ago and Justin Fang became a member two months ago.

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