Quote:
Originally Posted by Torture
I don't think Gondek has been perfect, but I definitely don't think she's the worst mayor ever or deserves to be recalled. It kind of seems like at times she's walked down the middle and managed to piss off both sides of the political spectrum.
For instance..
The right is mad about the climate emergency, bag tax, taxes going up, etc.
The left is mad that she (and the rest of council) handed out millions for an arena deal.
Yet if she had just acted as most typical right wing politicians without the climate emergency, bag tax on single use, etc, that same right wing base probably would have been just fine with handing out millions for the arena (in fact in previous elections the right wing mayoral candidate was all for an arena)....and taxes probably still would have gone up. Or, if she hadn't done the arena deal, much of the left would probably still be happy with her.
Sometimes when you get a deal and both sides are a little bit upset that's a sign you found some balance.
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I actually think she's highly intelligent and technically very competent. She's an awful politician though because she's absolutely tone def on how to handle and message things publicly. The mayor's job isn't technical, it's to create and spend the political capital publicly and intergovernmentally to get done what must be done for the benefit of Calgarians and to that point she's awful.
The original arena deal falling apart happened because Murray got cold feet with the cost overruns from inflation from when the original deal was signed. By applying additional spend for solar panels / sidewalks et al (Even if that's standard course for the approvals process for similar projects) it gave him an opening to paint the deal falling apart as being related to the 'climate emergency' declaration et al and make it seem like essentially the city's fault when it was actually the exact opposite. This error meant that the city got steamrolled by Murray on deal #2 because a lot of the public was not on the mayor's side.
The menorah lighting mishap. Honestly if she just showed up and lit the menorah like every other Calgary mayor has done since the beginning of time any blowback from pro-Palestinian folks would have been very minor if at all, because it would have run under the surface and probably wouldn't have been noticed. Instead she had to break with tradition and throw out a tweet spotlighting the issue and her position which is counter to a good chunk of Calgarians. It basically created a Streisand effect to the issue and where she stood.
Getting booed at the Saddledome on national TV. I don't know who thought it was a good idea to put the mayor who has the lowest popularity reading of all time in front of an audience that is heavily composed of her most critical demographics in front of a national audience that probably had 10-20% of the entire city of Calgary watching (What could go wrong? . . .lol). Again one can blame her staff for this, but she herself should have had enough self-awareness to avoid this situation.
Again, intelligent person, highly competent on city issues, but extremely poor politician.