As civic election day approached, three prominent Victoria-area New Democrats issued a letter of endorsement for the capital city’s two-term mayor.

“Dear friend,” wrote provincial MLAs Carole James and Rob Fleming and federal MP Murray Rankin. “We are writing to you today to ask you to re-elect Dean Fortin. Only he has the experience and commitment to build a more dynamic, vibrant, progressive city.”

The capital region has been winning territory for the New Democrats more often than not. But this was not an election to be taking anything for granted, as the trio went on to acknowledge: “The race is tight. Every vote will count.”

So it was and so they did.

When the final count was in Saturday, Fortin had fallen 89 votes short of another term in the mayor’s chair, losing to Lisa Helps, the 38-year-old founder of a community microlending agency with a single term as a city councillor under her belt.

Landslide Lisa, as she was dubbed by Victoria Times Colonist columnist Jack Knox, patterned her drive on the grassroots, next-gen success of Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi.

She even pinched his not-affiliated-with-other parties campaign colour — purple — for signs that came with an irresistible slogan: “Voting Helps.”

Underscoring her green-tinged street cred, there was Helps on the front page of the Times Colonist Tuesday, cuddling one of the five chickens she raises in her own backyard. (Top that if you can, Mayor Robertson).

The mayor-elect of B.C.’s capital confided to reporter Bill Cleverley how she’d bought her first pair of pantyhose during the campaign, and further disclosed the wording of one of her tattoos: “And your very flesh shall be a great poem.” A quote from Walt Whitman, folks, and if you must know, imprinted on her arm.

By comparison, local New Democrats were looking somewhat drab and last-gen, so to speak.

Fortin, 55, took the loss onto his own shoulders, being unable to pass the buck for the many bucks over-budget ($16 million and counting) new bridge across the city’s inner harbour.

The loss was an embarrassing one for the NDP, which prides itself on being able to get out its vote in campaigns at every level of government. Even at the civic level, the party is nothing like Vancouver’s civic NPA, whose organizational stick-to-it-iveness might be considered amateurish for a fantasy football league.

To be sure, in Victoria the mayor’s race was close and the party did manage to elect four of the six candidates it endorsed for council. Privately, though, New Democrats expressed concern about the longer-term implications of their party being outclassed by an emerging community-based coalition with ties to the Green party.

MP Rankin almost lost Victoria’s federal seat to a Green challenger in a byelection two years ago. Of course the national leader of the Greens, Elizabeth May, holds down her party’s first toehold in the federal parliament by representing a seat in the provincial capital region as well.

In the last provincial election, the NDP had expected to capture the Oak Bay-Gordon Head constituency from the B.C. Liberals. Then MLA Ida Chong was seen as relatively easy pickings and she did indeed go down to defeat.

But she was beaten by the Greens’ Andrew Weaver, who became the first member of his party elected to the provincial legislature (Chong Saturday lost an ill-advised comeback bid in Victoria, running for mayor and finishing a distant third).

The Greens almost eked out a second win provincially in Saanich North and the Islands in 2013. Fewer than 400 votes separated the winning New Democrat Gary Holman from the second-place Liberals and the third-place Greens, a near-three-way-tie.

The Greens, as supporters point out, take votes from all sides and they also provide a choice for folks who might otherwise not vote at all.

Still, Green candidates, official and otherwise, pose a particular threat to the NDP by doing well in a region that is otherwise strongly represented in the B.C. legislature by New Democrats.

Plus the rise of the Greens comes at a time when Opposition leader John Horgan is trying to reposition the NDP as more friendly to resource development, thereby risking the support of green-leaning members of his own party.

•

The election results from the capital suburb of View Royal provided a happy footnote to those botched firings in the health ministry two years ago.

One of those fired, Ron Mattson, was also a longtime member of View Royal council and he stuck it out through the ensuing controversy with the support of family, friends and enough of the electorate to give him the benefit of the doubt.

He also kept his sense of humour intact, despite the best efforts of the government to destroy his reputation.

When the ministry finally settled his suit for wrongful dismissal in August of this year, Mattson joked that he was thinking of running for re-election with the mock-Nixonesque slogan: “I am not a crook.”

On Saturday, he was re-elected for another term, his seventh. I have to think that verdict was more gratifying than the grudging apology from the health ministry.

vpalmer@vancouversun.com

Click here to report a typo or visit vancouversun.com/typo.

Is there more to this story? We'd like to hear from you about this or any other stories you think we should know about. CLICK HERE or go to vancouversun.com/moretothestory