Council veteran Chabot announces bid for mayor
Pledging to renew respect for taxpayers and “change the tone at the top,” Ward 10 Coun. Andre Chabot has launched his mayoral campaign.
After 12 years on council, Chabot will officially announce his intentions on Wednesday to challenge incumbent Mayor Naheed Nenshi for council’s top chair in the Oct. 16 municipal election.
The fiscal conservative, who has long flirted with the idea of a mayoral run, said his platform will appeal to the “common man” struggling to make ends meet and tired of rising taxes.
“Under me, we will not spend money on things that (will) cost (citizens) more tax dollars. I will keep their taxes down to the consumer price index,” Chabot said in an interview Tuesday at the Blackfoot Truckstop Diner.
“(People) see increase after increase on their tax bill and they don’t see the benefit of it.”
Chabot said he wants to bring respect back to city hall, painting a picture of a current culture in which staff are afraid to speak up, scared to come forward with ideas and simply biding time before retirement.
“Essentially, what I’m looking for is to change the tone at the top and bring back a sense of renewed collaboration and partnership with administration, as opposed to dealing with things from an adversarial perspective,” Chabot said.
Chabot saw his district radically reshaped in the recent redrawing of ward boundaries and said his decision to run for mayor comes after considering several options: run against sitting councillors Ray Jones or Gian-Carlo Carra, retire or throw his hat in the mayoral ring.
The former construction worker and technical sales rep acknowledged that unseating Nenshi — who, according to a recent Mainstreet Research poll enjoys a comfortable but shaky 60 per cent approval rating with Calgarians — will be tough, but is doable.
“It’s virtually insurmountable, but I never back down from a fight,” Chabot said.
“I think I can do better than our current mayor. I think he’s beatable.”
Chabot charged that Nenshi can be “condescending” and “insulting” to members of the public, staff or councillors with opposing views.
“When someone presents to council and the mayor or a member of council doesn’t like it, they get ridiculed,” he said.
While Chabot boasts more than a decade on city council, most Calgarians pay little attention to municipal politics and would be challenged to pick the veteran councillor out of a lineup, says David Taras, a political analyst at Mount Royal University.
“He’s very, very popular in the northeast … but the problem is even though he’s been on council for all these years, I think most Calgarians don’t know who he is,” Taras said.
Not only does Chabot face a popular incumbent mayor who has spent the past seven years building up his political capital and brand, his campaign may inadvertently help Nenshi, Taras added.
“This is Nenshi’s dream day because it discourages someone else who might be a lot tougher to beat than Chabot from coming into the race,” he said.
“So if there’s anybody on the sidelines with big money, big endorsements and a big name who was going to run, that candidate would be discouraged because the right wing vote would be split.”
Known as a procedural stickler, Chabot lost three times in Ward 10 before winning his seat in a 2005 byelection.
His bid for the big chair on city council brings the number of people who have formally declared an intention to run for mayor in the 2017 election to four.
He joins Calgary businessman Shawn Baldwin, Nenshi, who is now seeking a third term in office, and David Lapp, who threw his hat into the ring on Monday.
It’s virtually insurmountable, but I never back down from a fight. I think I can do better than our current mayor. I think he’s beatable.