Mayor Nenshi feels pressure to seek fourth term
Idea of leadership change at precarious moment has people worried, he says
In the pivotal year before the next municipal election, city hall was often eerily quiet.
The COVID-19 pandemic triggered two states of local emergency in Calgary and left council chambers virtually empty most days, with councillors working from home. For some council meetings, Mayor Naheed Nenshi was the only elected official in the room, keeping the meeting running while councillors' voices floated in over a teleconference.
It was far from the strangest scene of the past year in a pandemic.
The coronavirus introduced new health precautions into everyone's daily lives, forced some businesses to close, and kept families apart for months.
City business didn't stop, with council approving the final alignment for the Green Line LRT project, considering the future of the city's suburban growth and navigating a debate on reallocating part of the police budget.
But Calgary was battered again in a year in which it hoped to take steps toward economic recovery. Early in the pandemic, Nenshi described the “triple whammy” Calgary faces owing to the global economic recession, the oil-price crash and the COVID-19 crisis.
In a year-end interview with Postmedia, the mayor said there are now two more major challenges on the list: a societal “reckoning” over systemic racism demanding action, including from the city government. And June 2020 also brought the fourth-costliest natural disaster in Canadian history to Calgary as a devastating hailstorm dealt more than $1.2 billion in damage.
The question now, with a municipal election set for October 2021, is who will be on council to work on picking up the pieces.
But first comes the question of who is running — and the most intense scrutiny is on the mayor's chair.
Nenshi marked 10 years as mayor this fall. And, as he's been saying for months, he remains undecided about seeking a fourth term, still weighing the personal and professional factors of the choice.
“I guess it's hard to say it this way, because you'll never have done enough. There's always more to do,” he said.
“But are we at a stage where the organization, the City of Calgary and the community are in strong enough shape that I can hand them over and trust that whomever comes after will get the chance to put their own stamp on things, but at the same time not break what we've built together?”
Nenshi's decision is coming: In 2021, he'll either have to start raising money for a campaign or let other potential candidates know he's out.
But the pandemic — and the ensuing social and economic fallout — hasn't ended. And Nenshi said that's bringing different pressures to the decision.
“Early in the year, people I know would always say, ` Well, as a Calgarian, I kind of wish you'd run again. But as your friend, it's time for you to think about something else.' But now it's really shifted after COVID,” he said.
“I'm feeling a ton of pressure from all sides of the political spectrum. Even people who don't like me very much saying, `Could you just do this again? Get us out of this and hand it over to my guy or my girl later.' And I'm also hearing that from a lot of people who want to be mayor: `Could you just give me four more years?'”
But he is sure that Calgary needs a mayor who, as he describes it, “can meet this critical moment in history.”
“My job is to make the moment less critical, and figure out if I or someone else can meet that moment. So that's really what's going through my head now.”
So far, a few others have said they intend to run for mayor. Coun. Jeromy Farkas announced his campaign in September and, according to social media accounts, other Calgarians planning to run include Chibunna Theodore (Teddy) Ogbonna, Emile Gabriel, Shaoli Wang, James Desautels and Brad Field.
No candidates are official until they submit nomination documents, which the city will begin accepting Monday.
Many more people in Calgary will be vaccinated by the time campaigns start running at full tilt in 2021.
But COVID is bound to make the election process look different, too.
Nenshi is still optimistic about the city's future past the pandemic. “You can't survive without being optimistic in this job,” he said.
“Frankly, we have no other choice. We've got two paths in front of us: one is to be angry and let the world change around us, and the other is to take charge of that change in the world.”