POLITICS REMAINS A PARTY-FOR SOME

The "Overgrow the government" sign outside was a pretty good indication,
but the cloud of pot smoke at the door made it clear this was the party
to be at election night. Behind a locked metal gate in a Victory Square
alley, Marijuana Party faithful were in a relatively giddy mood long
before the polls closed at 8 p.m.

The cost of the party trays full of food-cakes, cookies, sandwiches and
plenty of other munchies-contributed to the $210,000 spent on the
campaign by Marijuana Party money man Marc Emery, candidate in Vancouver
Burrard.

"By the time it's done," said Emery, "in addition to the $10,000 in
contributions we got, I'll have paid for about 96 per cent of the
campaign. Fortunately, a lot of people like to buy marijuana seeds, so
all the money I ever get goes into the movement. But I'm going to end up
paying about $100,000 in taxes, because I had to declare it as taxable
income."

Fully confident of a Liberal landslide before the polls closed, Emery
was nevertheless pleased with the way the Marijuana campaign went over
the past four weeks. He said he looks forward to the next four years of
building the party in all of B.C.'s 79 ridings, each ballot inked with
the name of a Marijuana Party candidate this election.

"We want to build a political infrastructure, so all of these 79
candidates are going to go back and build a local organization now, to
build up credibility over the next four years once the Liberals
disappoint-as they must, because there's going to be so many of them.
You'll have 79 guys sitting around bored as hell, debating with their
shadows, and it'll make them lazy and sloppy. At the end of that,
there'll be a vacuum and a need for an opposition to get voted in. This
is all about working for the next election."

He said that during the campaign, voters slowly began to realize that
Marijuana is a mainstream party with mainstream issues, and just happens
to have an unusual name.

"If one in 20 people voted for us, that's be amazing," he said. "Because
who votes? Mostly solid-rock, middle-class people with houses and
children. To get one in 20 of those people to vote for a party whose
icon is an illegal plant, that's a good success rate, and represents a
penetration into the middle-class market that we've got to make."

At the Burrard campaign headquarters of Liberal candidate Lorne
Mayencourt, volunteers-including Granville Entertainment bar operators
Vance Campbell and Blaine Culling-were working the phones right up until
8 p.m. election night.

"People have given us a very positive response-not one person hung up on
me or told me to buzz off, and I went through quite a few sheets of
names," said Campbell.

A lead in the hospitality industry's fight to quash anti-smoking laws,
Campbell also lobbied the provincial government to have cabarets remain
open until 4 a.m.

"One thing the Liberals will do is at least listen," said Campbell. "(On
the issue of 4 a.m. closings), I took a petition with 10,000 names to
(Burrard NDP MLA) Tim Stevenson. He gave me a nod and a wink, we had our
picture taken on the steps of the parliament buildings, and that's the
last I ever heard of it. Someone in the NDP caucus decided they didn't
think it was appropriate to have 4 a.m. closings and they struck it out
before it even got to the legislature."

As for the WCB's no-smoking "debacle," Campbell said, "at least the
Liberals would have consulted us before they pulled the plug. I don't
believe the NDP supported our industry at all over the past 10 years. We
desperately need change, and it's really important to me that Lorne
(Mayencourt) gets in."

By 10 p.m. Wednesday, Mayencourt was declared the winner in Burrard.
Meanwhile, independent candidate Boris Bear had only a couple dozen
votes.

"That's fantastic," enthused the bear-suited candidate. "Actually, we
were expecting somewhere between 500 and 600 votes, but we were more
about what happened during the campaign than (election night).
Unfortunately, the act of going out to vote isn't as fun as what I had
people doing during the campaign, which was about promoting fun."

Highlights of Mr. Bear's campaign include running the half-marathon in
his bear suit, and having "our new premier" say the Liberals wouldn't be
against Bear's plan to build a ferris wheel downtown.

"Another great moment for me was later that day, when I got kicked off
the Shaw (TV) debate, and got Marc Emery mad at me. He didn't feel I was
a serious candidate, that any of my issues had any legislative capacity.
Funny how he was the only candidate of five to be mad about me being
there."