Metro column: Advice for the mayoral runners-up: don’t fade away
Naheed Nenshi is our new mayor. I doubt anyone would have guessed that might be the outcome in 2007 following Dave Bronconnier’s thorough thumping of high spending rival Alnoor Kassam.
I remember thinking at the time that Alnoor Kassam could have been be our next mayor, if he really wanted to be. The path to victory in 2010 for him was a simple one.
All he had to do was spend three years being seen as an active and caring citizen who worked hard in the community and was always there to offer sound advice on the affairs of city hall.
This was the one big thing Kassam was missing in 2007. He felt to voters like an opportunist;
someone who came out of nowhere to run for the big chair, someone who didn’t really care about Calgarians, someone who was just in it for himself and was willing to spend $1 million of his own money for the prestige Nenshi is bathed in today.
It was a simple enough problem for Kassam to overcome — be the thing Calgarians wanted, but didn’t see you as: An engaged, community focussed alternative.
Sadly, Kassam did not do this. Instead, he drifted from the public eye, returning to his personal business world. When he announced this spring he was ready to take another shot at the mayor’s chair, hardly anyone batted an eye.
With a sideways glance we seemingly said, “That guy again? He hasn’t done anything for Calgary for the past three years. Why would I vote for him?”
With no traction at all, Kassam pulled out of the race before nomination day even arrived.
I recount this tale as a warning to all the unsuccessful candidates from last week. If you really care about Calgary, your work is not done. Just because you were not elected does not mean that the city does not need you.
You proved yourself to be engaged, thoughtful and caring enough to want to stand up and represent the rest of us. Please do not shrink into the background and spend the next three years doing little.
Just because you are not on council does not mean you cannot help make Calgary a better place.
Show us you didn’t run because of an oversized ego. Show us you ran because you are passionate about a better Calgary.
Yes, it’s true. This will give you an even better shot at winning a seat in 2013 — should you choose to run again.
But more importantly, the fruits of your labours really will make a difference over the next three years.
And isn’t that why you ran in the first place?
Original: http://www.metronews.ca/calgary/local/article/676658–a-call-to-the-runners-up
Fun with Maps: Top 3 Calgary mayoral candidate vote share
I’ve been wanting to do this kind of thing for a while. I love maps and I love data. I also love Calgary politics and the intrigue of elections. So it only made sense that I would want to mash that all up together to create some visual representations of the 2010 Calgary Municipal Election. Problem is, I don’t have a GIS background.
Good news! My brother-in-law, David Johns, does! David is currently a UofC student studying biology with a focus in GIS. Granted the skills he’s learning are meant to track animal populations, but after not much convincing at the Thanksgiving table he agreed to visualize some data for me. Hopefully he can use these for a class project or two.
We’ll be working on some other maps later today, but for now, here is the visualization for each of the top 3 mayoral candidates’ vote share (percentage). Pretty basic stuff so far, but we’ve got some cooler maps coming to help illustrate what happened on election day. We’ll also load it all into Google Maps as well. Stay tuned!
PS – The info comes from the City of Calgary’s voter subdivision breakdowns released last night. They can be found here. Obviously the City is not responsible for any transposing mistakes we may have made.
Metro column: Plenty to be proud of
The 2010 Municipal Election is over and all Calgarians should be very proud.
Yes, it’s true we elected the first Muslim mayor in a major Canadian city and are getting national media attention because of it.
But let’s face it — no one really cared during the election. It was only brought up once by a media outlet, and they were immediately rebuked by the public for trying to make Naheed Nenshi’s religion an issue worthy of discussion. It’s not.
There are many things, however, that are.
The most exciting thing to happen on election day was that 53 per cent of Calgarians showed up to the polls. In a Canadian municipal election, that is a huge number.
To help put it in perspective, only one-third of Calgarians voted in 2007, and just six short years ago an abysmal, hang-your-head-in-shame, 18 per cent bothered to visit a poll.
Some more perspective: More people voted for Naheed Nenshi this year than voted for all candidates combined in 2004.
Even if we ignore who the votes went to this time around, we know more Calgarians cast their ballot this year than in the two previous elections combined.
To have such a big turnaround in such a short period is remarkable.
What is even more remarkable is how we did it. In a world where politics is often boiled down to yes versus no, left versus right, this guy versus that guy, Calgary held an election where the basis of the electorate’s engagement was not polarization. It was about who had the best ideas.
A lot has been said about Nenshi and his “Better Ideas,” but every other candidate deserves an equal amount of credit in this regard.
Barb Higgins and Ric McIver put forward solid platforms — although a little late. They talked about the things that should be done in Calgary, in what order, and why or why not their ideas were more valid than those of others.
Sadly, this is not normal.
In short, they engaged Calgarians, in Nenshi’s words, in “adult conversations.” This was not a campaign of sound bites; it was a campaign of thoughtfulness.
And we saw Calgarians respond to that in record numbers. This should be the chief lesson we take from this election. We’re smarter than you give us credit for. When you give us options, we’re happy to participate.
This is the next challenge, however: How does a mayor who engaged voters in a way unlike any have done before continue under this expectation?
Fortunately we can look to Barack Obama to see how not to do it. Nenshi can’t stop tweeting; he can’t stop sending out emails to followers. He has to keep up the level of discourse we have come to expect from him.
If he doesn’t, he’ll fail. The problem is, the hardest part of the job is staying externally focussed. There are lots of internal city issues facing him, from the budget shortfall to the airport tunnel to just about anything else you can think of.
Nenshi isn’t a magician. He’s not the solution to all of our problems.
But if he can keep involving Calgarians in the decision making process, we’ll slowly start to see Calgary become that “beacon on the hill” the national media think we are.
Not because Nenshi is Muslim, but because he allows us all to participate in Calgary.
Original: http://www.metronews.ca/calgary/local/article/669911–plenty-to-be-proud-of
What’s Next? Nenshi’s First 100 Days: Part 1, The First Official Meetings
With the election firmly in the books – and plenty of analysis still to come – I wanted to be the first to take a look forward at what’s next for our new mayor.
Some of the early important dates are already known.
October 25 at 7pm will be the swearing in of the new council. It is at that point the torch officially passes from Mayor Broconnier to Mayor Nenshi.
The next day at 9:30am the “Organizational Business Meeting” begins. This is where the new council learns all the ins and the outs. They’ll get a tour of the premises, get their keys to the washrooms, and pick their offices and council chamber seats. This is also when they will have discussions about the structure of their office staff and who gets first dibs at the staff of the retiring or defeated aldermen. (With the experience this individuals have, expect several of them to stay in the Office of the Aldermen, just with new bosses.) This is also the meeting where council will determine who will sit on what committees and boards they need to populate. Expect lots of backroom talk and positioning as each tries to ensure they get onto a committee they believe their skills will be most useful on – or at least the cushiest gigs.
The first public meeting will be the Standing Policy Committee (SPC) on Community & Protective Services on November 2 at 9:30am in the Engineering Traditions Room. The next day at the same time and the same place will be the SPC on Finance & Corporate Services, while on the Thursday the Intergovernmental Affairs Committee will be at 9:30am and the Gas, Power & Telecommunications Committee will meet at 1pm.
The following week, on Monday, November 8 will be the public’s first chance to see our council seated for the first time all together. This will be their first Council Meeting. It will also be their first combined public hearing. Talk about starting off in the deep end; there is no swimming lesson here. The agenda for this meeting will be released on Thursday, November 4. Assuming this meeting goes long, the overflow will be at 1pm the next day. The rest of the committee meetings will have their first meeting between November 9 and 18.
The week of November 22-25 will be an interesting one as it is the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association convention in Edmonton. There are no meetings scheduled and because it is so close you can probably expect the majority of council to attend. It might be tough for the newbies however as they will still be getting their feet under them and can’t really afford the time out of the office. But it will be rewarding for them if they go. I expect some will stay and some will go depending on how ready they feel for the next week, which is when things are really going to get crazy.
November 28 to December 3 is the week Calgarians have been waiting for – and dreading – for 3 years. It is when the Business Plan and Budget Adjustment Debates happen. How council will spend our money – and what the property tax increase will be – will be set at these meetings. Expect LOTS of backroom dealings between aldermen and department/business unit heads between now and these days. This is when we will see the mayor and his aldermen show there stripes.
Then there are a couple weeks of regular meetings before 3 weeks of holidays – the first moment the new mayor will be able to catch his breath.
I expect all of this plus the month of January to determine Mayor Nenshi’s next three years. Basically, he has 100 days to win or lose much of Calgary’s support.
In coming posts in this series I will examine the early days meetings, some actions Nenshi can take to increase his likelihood of success, what might be changing at the City of Calgary as a result of this election, and what to do with the “Purple Army”.
Calgary, meet your new council
The unofficial results are in and we have seen a mix of change and returning of the old guard happening. It’s a whole new ball game now; an entirly new dynamic. Here’s the list of who the fifteeen around the table will be:
Mayor – Naheed Nenshi
Ward 1 – Dale Hodges
Ward 2 – Gord Lowe
Ward 3 – Jim Stevenson
Ward 4 – Gael Macleod
Ward 5 – Ray Jones
Ward 6 – Richard Pootmans
Ward 7 – Druh Farrell
Ward 8 – John Mar
Ward 9 – Gian-Carlo Carra
Ward 10 – Andre Chabot
Ward 11 – Brian Pincott
Ward 12 – Shane Keating
Ward 13 – Diane Colley-Urquhart
Ward 14 – Peter Demong
The biggest question facing how this new council will work together is what kind of a chair will Naheed Nenshi be. Will he be a bullying mayor (not likely) or more laissez faire in his control of meetings? Or might he be more like Bronconnier and give alderman some leeway, but keep them on a short leash if they stray too far outside what is prescribed in the procedural bylaw. An alderman like Druh Farrell will live and die by the answer to this question. Nenshi could help focus her and turn her into one of the most productive aldermen on council. Diane Colley-Urquhart could be one to struggle if she doesn’t bring herself prepared to meetings with a plan on how to present her requests.
Of course the new faces on council will provide an interesting dynamic as well. How will Gian-Carlo Carra implement his vision? He’ll have to do the same as Colley-Urquhart and be prepared to have a plan too, otherwise he could find himself as the next Druh Farrell of council: someone with great ideas but struggling to get people to understand or enact them. It will all come down to clear communication with their colleagues for all three of these alderman. The same could be said of Shane Keating and Richard Pootmans as well. Both are strong aldermen, but could find themselves floundering if they don’t get into Nenshi’s good books or find a way to focus their asks into a clear, straightforward way. They could end up being at odds with the mayor and the majority of council and thereby getting themselves – and their voters – thoroughly frustrated if they don’t.
Gael Macleod is a bit of an unknown. I think she will probably fit well into this group and will be an effective alderman as Hawkesworth was before her. Look for her to do a lot of listening and learning in the early days before she proves to be one of this group’s steadiest members – provided she finds her niche.
Peter Demong is another big question mark. With McIver and Connelly gone he provides councils most conservative voice. Whether he ends up as the strong fiscal hawk on council or a “right wing nut job”- as he has been painted by some – will entirely be up to him. I expect he will buddy up to Jim Stevenson and Dale Hodges to look for some wingman support. If he gets this, and stays consistent in his messaging, he could prove to be a very effective voice on council just as McIver was for 9 years. I hope it goes this way as the alternative is becoming a laughing stock, dragging Calgary down with him. And no one wins in that scenario.
Provided Nenshi (as mayor) and Brian Pincott (as the “elder statesman”) find a mutual respect for one another and each others talents, Pincott could prove to be council’s best member. If Nenshi figures out how to keep his campaign followers engaged, Pincott could be one of the biggest beneficiaries by following the new mayor’s example and engaging his constituents in a way he hasn’t up until now. If Pincott was more transparent and had a bit more of a following like Nenshi, he could do some amazing things that would surprise even the most steadfast ideologue. This will take a lot of work on Pincott’s part and a willingness from Nenshi to help him. Pride will need to be swallowed.
The same as Pincott holds true for John Mar. If Nenshi and Mar find common ground Mar could be a leader on council. If they don’t, he could very well become Nenshi’s biggest pain. Unfortunately this would rob Calgarians of much Mar has to offer. The exact same could be said of Chabot. Mar and Chabot have often been “swing votes”. It will be fascinating to watch what way they swing now.
The one thing that I think is probably a given is that – provided they agree on the budget – Gord Lowe could become a de facto “second in command”. I’m confident Nenshi will look to him for guidance and, for lack of a better term, fatherly advice. (Nenshi won’t need political advice. Not that he’d listen to it anyway.)
We won’t have to wait long to see whatever new dynamic emerges because being locked in a room together for organizational meetings in their first week together followed by the lengthy budget negotiating process will force them to get to know one another before we every really get a chance to know them ourselves.
PS – Did you see the 2007 Helene Larocque redux? Incumbent Linda Fox-Mellway took a beating and ended up placing forth in ward 14. Just like ward 3 in 2007, it looks like ward 14 REALLY wanted a change this time around.
Cross posted to CalgaryPolitics.com
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