IS NENSHI-SMITH BATTLE A REPEAT OF 2012 ELECTION?
Mayoral campaign bears eerie resemblance to Lake of Fire meltdown of Wildrose Party
Is this polling, or pinball?
The latest survey of Calgary voters, commissioned by a proGreen Line group, shows Mayor Naheed Nenshi ahead by 15 points.
The last one, done for Postmedia, said Bill Smith was leading by 17.
We all know that pre-election polling can be goofy, erratic, and just plain wrong. In this case, somebody sure is.
But is it possible that Nenshi was genuinely behind, and has now pulled ahead? Did these two polls somehow catch the extreme edges of the mayor’s decline, and now his rebound?
Maybe so. This struggle carries a whiff of the 2012 provincial campaign, when the governing Progressive Conservatives bounced back from a huge deficit to beat Wildrose in the final week.
The situations are eerily similar.
The PCs got back in the fight when voters started looking hard at Wildrose. They saw the fuming Lake of Fire, the fate predicted for gays by one Wildrose candidate.
They were turned off by leader Danielle Smith’s refusal to ditch candidates who said such outrageous things, her reluctance to acknowledge climate change, and other oddities.
Today, Nenshi’s counterpunches against Smith aren’t so colourful, but they could be effective.
The mayor’s campaigners have been blasting Smith’s call for a Green Line stall. They needle him for news that bailiffs were empowered earlier this year to seize his law firm’s property for an unpaid debt.
Smith says that was all a simple case of confused addresses. Now come reports of a settled 2010 lawsuit in which claimants said he failed in his duty as a lawyer — a charge Smith denies.
Smith still refuses to release a list of his campaign donors. He’s not obliged to by law, but every significant candidate for the mayor’s office has done this voluntarily since at least 2010.
When a candidate refuses — and even accuses opponents of trying to bully him into it — voters are certainly entitled to wonder why.
If Calgarians are determined to dump Nenshi, they deserve an extremely good mayor in return. Smith hasn’t made that case yet. He hasn’t done much beyond highlighting Nenshi’s deficiencies and poking his sore spots.
When Nenshi first ran in 2010, there had never been anything like the detailed policies he provided online, on everything from transit to social inclusion. The voters knew exactly what he believed.
Virtually unknown at the start, Nenshi compelled people to turn to him when they weren’t satisfied with the other main candidates, Barb Higgins and Ric McIver.
Nenshi’s campaign this year is also quite detailed.
Nothing like that kind of work has gone into Smith’s effort. He confesses he doesn’t know much about some areas of policy. He’ll learn on the job.
The more likely outcome is that he’ll be eaten alive by bureaucratic sharks eager for newbie politicians to run their agendas for them.
Some experience and knowledge are essential for this job. The weight of a vast bureaucracy, pressing down on a tiny group of 15 elected officials, will simply crush an under-qualified mayor.
Two of the most effective Calgary mayors ever — Al Duerr and Dave Bronconnier — had both been councillors before they won.
Ralph Klein hadn’t been elected, but he knew city hall intimately as a journalist.
Nenshi was the rare outsider who already understood more about city hall than some elected politicians.
He’s made his mistakes in the last couple of years. Nenshi’s skin has grown thinner, not thicker, with mounting criticism. Midfield Park is a disaster. Taxes have risen too far, too fast.
But if he wins after this monumental scare, he’ll likely be a chastened and humbled mayor.
In 2012, the voters took out their anger at the PCs for three weeks.
It faded when they looked seriously at the alternative. A preview of election day? We’ll know soon enough.