ELECTION DECISIONS LOOM
Mayoral frontrunners have contrasting visions for the city
The two front-runners fighting to be the city’s next mayor are each quintessential Calgary, though their life stories are made of very different narratives.
One is the 45-year-old son of hard-working immigrant parents, who proudly talks about growing up on Calgary’s east side, where he convinced Forest Lawn librarians to let him take out more books than the official limit because he loved reading so much.
Naheed Nenshi attended the gifted program at Queen Elizabeth High School and participated in debate and drama, before obtaining a business degree at the University of Calgary while serving as president of the school’s students’ union.
A master’s degree in public policy at Harvard followed, and while Nenshi could have worked anywhere in the world, he settled down close to family in Calgary, where he headed his own consulting firm, then taught non-profit management at Mount Royal before surprising the nation when he was elected mayor of Calgary on Oct. 18, 2010.
The man who has emerged as the incumbent mayor’s main competition in a 10-person race for mayor is 54-year-old Bill Smith.
Smith was adopted by parents focused on family service and grew up on the city’s west end, where he played hockey and football as a child and attended Ernest Manning and Bishop Carroll High School.
His first job was as a lifeguard with the City of Calgary.
Despite not earning a high school diploma, Smith obtained admission to the University of Calgary through matriculation and there he studied physical education and played football on the Dinos 1985 Vanier Cup winning team, returning years later to complete law school while working full-time as a firefighter and raising four children.
Smith’s resume includes battling in the “toughest firefighter alive” competition, running for school board trustee in 1998, volunteering with the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta for more than two decades, coaching football and running a boutique law shop in downtown Calgary.
On Monday, Calgarians will likely pick one of these two men to be their mayor.
From their life stories to their ideas for what a model Calgary will look like — and even their choices in campaign swag (one has car flags and dog Frisbees; the other colourful keepsake lawn signs designed by a local artist) — the differences between Smith and Nenshi are striking.
And pundits agree it feels like a coin toss to predict whether Smith or Nenshi will lead the city for the next four years.
“I think it’s going to be a really tight election and a long election night,” said Mount Royal University political analyst David Taras.
That wasn’t the case four years ago, when Nenshi earned 74 per cent of the vote and secured his second term as mayor.
But much has changed since he sailed to victory in the 2013 municipal election.
At that time, Nenshi was receiving widespread praise for his leadership through Calgary’s devastating flood, oil was trading over $100 a barrel, a single-digit vacancy rate made it difficult to find office space downtown, unemployment was low, and conservative politicians ruled federally and provincially.
Then oil prices crashed and the worst recession in a generation followed.
Today, Calgary’s unemployment rate is one of the highest among major Canadian cities and the equivalent of one in four downtown office towers stand empty amid a record-high vacancy rate.
At the same time, many Calgarians have grown increasingly frustrated with increases in their property tax bills and new taxes from other levels of government, including Premier Rachel Notley’s NDP government, which ended 44 years of Progressive Conservative rule in May 2015.
“There’s a taxpayer revolt,” Taras said. “It’s not only the city … but Nenshi is the first one up.”
“In good economic times, there’s a lot of forgiveness for politicians. In bad economic times, there’s very little forgiveness,” he added.
As taxes and spending have emerged as the No. 1 issue during this election campaign, Smith has been consistent with a message that property taxes are too high and they’ve skyrocketed under Nenshi’s leadership.
In campaign material, the incumbent mayor maintains Calgary has the lowest residential taxes of any major city in Canada, but work remains to be done.
Nenshi declared in November he would run for a third time following an eventful second term that included being named world’s best mayor in a 2014 competition, being sued for defamation by home builder Cal Wenzel, and eventually welcoming Uber to Calgary after a lengthy saga that included a widely circulated video recording in which Nenshi called the head of the ride-share service a “dick.”
Nenshi says the most common question he’s asked is why he’s running for a third term.
“Every politician will give you the same answer to that question and that answer, of course, is there’s lots of work left to do. And in this particular case, there’s lots of work left to do,” he told a Postmedia editorial board earlier this month.
Four months after Nenshi threw his name back into the mayoral race, longtime Ward 10 Coun. Andre Chabot officially announced he was running for the job in March, with a pledge to renew respect for taxpayers and “change the tone at the top.”
Many conservatives, including MP Michelle Rempel, attended Chabot’s $150-a-head campaign fundraiser at the Palace Theatre at the end of April, hungry to see a conservative resurgence in Calgary.
But as the months carried on and a new man with deep conservative connections entered the race, Chabot’s campaign failed to gain momentum.
“The conservatives have all gone to Smith. All the money, all the support, all the volunteers — they’ve all gone to (Smith) in a conservative city,” said Taras.
Smith, the Alberta PC party president from 2010 to 2013, formally kicked off his campaign at Fort Calgary in June.
There, he didn’t reveal detailed campaign promises or policies, but spoke broadly about reining in property taxes and the pain Calgarians have endured during the economic downturn.
Smith’s script has remained largely the same in the months since then, with many, including self-described policy-wonk Nenshi, criticizing his competitor for a campaign that lacks any real meat.
“I have been standing in the corner of the ring, with my shorts on, with my gloves on, dancing around, waiting, and my opponent refuses to get in the ring, which is actually a bit frustrating, because I want to be able to really have a clash of ideas here,” Nenshi said.
But Smith has stood by the key messages he’s put on the table.
“I’m committed to making this a better city, in terms of the spending, in terms of the taxation, in terms of how we treat people, and I’m going to do that every day of the year from now until the end of my fourth year. And if that doesn’t give you enough to make a decision on, then I’m not your guy,” Smith told a recent Postmedia editorial board.
Chabot, who sits in a distant third place, according to polls, has said he’s running against a guy who knows nothing and a guy who knows everything.
“I’m going to come up the middle as the guy who has a good understanding of the entire workings of city hall, what all our revenue streams are, what all our expenses are,” Chabot told a Postmedia editorial board.
Voters will choose between Chabot, Nenshi, Smith, Jason Achtymichuk, Brent Chisholm, Curtis Olson, Stan Waciak, Larry Heather, David Lapp or Emile Gabriel on Monday.
The race for the mayor’s seat remained quiet throughout the summer, as the unveiling of a $500,000 piece of public artwork at the city’s western limits caused widespread debate and scrutiny in August.
In early September, the spotlight on the municipal election heated up when the Flames announced they were no longer pursuing a Saddledome replacement.
Debate over a new arena hijacked the early days of the municipal campaign as NHL commissioner Gary Bettman blamed Nenshi for the arena impasse and both sides eventually released funding details for a $555-million arena in Victoria Park.
While Nenshi has long maintained that public money must be for public benefit and not private profit, Smith has tiptoed around funding commitments and said he can’t say what role taxpayers should play until he sees all aspects of the negotiations.
“One of the reasons we’re in this situation right now is a failure of leadership. We have a mayor who won’t deal fairly with anyone,” Smith told reporters on nomination day, when asked about the arena.
In the four weeks since nomination papers were filed, Smith has continued to attack a mayor he believes deserves to be turfed, while Nenshi has continued to demand more details from Smith.
That includes a list of campaign donors, which candidates don’t legally have to release until months after the election, though many, including Nenshi, voluntarily do so.
“(Nenshi) is trying to bully us into releasing our donors by suggesting there’s something nefarious going on,” said Smith, who won’t be releasing his list before election day.
In mayoral debates, the duo appeared unevenly matched, with Nenshi confidently diving deep into issues and Smith often grazing the surface, but earning audience approval for his general pledges to rein in city spending.
In recent days, voters flocked to advanced polling stations in record numbers as Smith weighed in on past dealings with a bailiff ready to seize his property, and Nenshi defended a Facebook video in which he suggested there were “forces in the community” using race and hateful language to support his opponents and “take the city backwards.”
While the city has spent $300,000 in an effort to boost turnout this election, it remains to be seen if this year’s 235-per-cent increase in advanced voters (when compared to the 2013 election) is thanks to the city’s efforts, or an angry electorate.
That will become clear late Monday evening when Calgarians learn who their next mayor will be.
I think it’s going to be a really tight election and a long election night.