Steve Filipovic is running for council as the Green Party candidate, this alone is the single biggest reason he may win. No over candidate has anything on the ballot beside their name to give them to set them apart from the rest. The impact of having the identifier on the ballot is worth a lot of votes when it is something people recognize.
The Greens do not have a lot of money for the campaign and Steve does not have a lot of volunteers, but he has campaigned hard and he has managed to personally shake more than 8000 hands to date. He has clearly won the sign war in this campaign has gained more name recognition from his signs than all the other candidates combined.
Politically Steve and I agree on the need to deal with issues that are of concern for society, especially when it comes to the environment, but we do fundamentally disagree on the approaches that are most likely to work. As an example, I have become a strong supporter of the use of P3s because from the data I have seen they do give us cost certainty for capital projects - Steve does not agree with this.
He is clearly the leading candidate on the left for getting elected to council, so if you are politically a progressive and are looking to defeat Barry Hobbis you only have one viable option.
Steve is a hard working guy, if he does win I doubt anyone else on council will put in as many hours as he would. I do worry that if he comes in and is automatically perceived to be in opposition to the mayor that he personally will suffer a lot more stress than he needs to his life. His energy I would hope would re-energize a council that has become tired and distant from the public.
As it stands at the moment, I see Steve coming in second within an outside chance of winning because his party name on the ballot may have more of an impact than I expect.
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