[GT] Calgary Municipal Election 2021

[RedHot25]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

I think a big part of that is how terrible Farkas is. I voted Nenshi every time, but am usually a right wing voter. This election had two choices and one of them was Farkas, so I think lots of people who would have preferred a right wing choice over Gondek picked her as the lesser of two evils. She probably benefited from the right wing leader being an imbecile.

Yes, and I'm assuming that Davison was hoping to fill that hole?

His candidacy, and everything surrounding it (e.g. Ward Sutherland randomly dropping out to provide advice?) still somewhat perplexes me.

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by Bunk

This is mind blowing to me that her support would be that widespread and geographically distributed, even in quite conservative areas of the city. A thorough victory.
__________________

Here is a distribution of the vote share between Gondek and Farkas for the advance voting. I did not size the bubble based on the total vote count. If I have enough time I might try to do the same for election day votes.

Farkas did best south of Glenmore and on the eastern edge. Gondek destroyed him in the inner city, the NW and the western side.

[Hack&Lube]

I've just come across this on Reddit in regards to Gondek's newly appointed Chief of Staff, Stephen Carter:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Calgary/com...eb2x&context=3

he is a former event planner who made the news some years ago after stiffing the UofC and other charities out of $600k he owed them. Theres a globe and mail article on it that’s easily findable. He is heavily involved in politics as a campaign manager and among other things has been involved with the provincial PCs, Wild Rose Party and various civic campaigns such as Nenshi and Gondek.

He was also Alison Redford’s campaign manager and she, like Gondek, appointed him as her first chief of staff after the campaign. By all accounts he ran such a chaotic and contentious office that Redford was forced to fire him about six months later, along with some of his hires.

This is who our new mayor thought would be an excellent choice for her first chief of staff.

Is anybody familiar with these allegations? Should we be concerned about him or Gondek's judgement?

[Cappy]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

I've just come across this on Reddit in regards to Gondek's newly appointed Chief of Staff, Stephen Carter:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Calgary/com...eb2x&context=3



Is anybody familiar with these allegations? Should we be concerned about him or Gondek's judgement?

The reford work and termination is well known. They joke about that on his podcast. The company debt thing is true. Him and his wife had an event company. Brought the Dali lama over or something and got hosed on it. He admitted that it didn’t go as planned. It’s a company so no personal liability

Stephen Carter is a pretty prominent campaign strategist. I image chief of staff is more policy? I don’t know about his record on that but his political opinions seem to fit the Mold of Jyoti

[Cappy]

I think there were several reasons reford cleaned house. Many of those having to do with and the party in general

But yes rumour has it he is a contentious politicker. Hipefully with a largely progressive council it won’t be an issue

[MegaErtz]

He reads CP and referenced the ongoing Chu transgressions thread on last night’s podcast. I wish him well in his new gig and hope he continues with the podcast, although I doubt that will happen.

[Burninator]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Aside from being a stupid, meaningless bit of moral grandstanding, that approach actually concerns the hell out of me. In the lower mainland, having everything the municipality does filtered through the lens of "climate emergency" language really just hurts people who aren't already settled. Try to get a house built there and the changes to building code explicitly for climate-change-oriented reasons has basically increased the cost of building to approximately double what it was ten years ago, in exchange for dubious or negligible environmental impact. You see municipalities demanding that solar panels be installed on city buildings even when the costs and recovered energy don't justify it because they want to "set an example". It is not a good mode for a municipal government to be in.

I mean something that could happen here is have new homes built with stronger materials that don't turn to confetti when a large hail storms rolls through the city a couple times per year. It's something that will cost money yes, but it's more than a negligible impact.

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by Cappy

The reford work and termination is well known. They joke about that on his podcast. The company debt thing is true. Him and his wife had an event company. Brought the Dali lama over or something and got hosed on it. He admitted that it didn’t go as planned. It’s a company so no personal liability

Stephen Carter is a pretty prominent campaign strategist. I image chief of staff is more policy? I don’t know about his record on that but his political opinions seem to fit the Mold of Jyoti

He was also Chief of Staff for Danielle Smith back in the Wildrose days but had to resign because of the issues with his failed company.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

I listened to that podcast and came away not thinking highly of him.

I also only heard one CP reference and it was about getting Nenshi elected.

[timun]

Originally Posted by RedHot25

Farkas didn't even win his own Ward?!

Farkas only had 38.4% of the votes to win Ward 11 in the first place in 2017. That was the third-lowest proportion of votes on council; only Ray Jones (35.5%) and Diane Colley-Urquhart (34.23%) had lower. He really wasn't all that popular in his(/my...) ward to begin with, he won because he had a much stronger base of supporters, and the vote split well in his favour (three of the four other candidates each carried >12% of the votes). Unfortunately for him that base was/is nowhere near broad enough to carry him to victory in a city-wide vote.

I said before in the "Ongoing YYCCC (Chu + Farkas) Transgressions Thread": Farkas voters are Farkas voters, and I didn't foresee anyone substantially siphoning votes away from him. But, he also wasn't going to be winning over many other voters either. The best he could have hoped for was Davison taking more of the vote from Gondek, but as I correctly predicted () Davison joining the race didn't really move the needle at all.

[#-3]

The podcast is a lot of fun, hopefully they are able to keep it going. The last time one of them took a government post it was shutdown for a while.

Listening to enough of what he puts out there, I think he was sitting on the progressive tip of the PC spear, and has been something of a lost soul since the party collapsed around him, he was involved in the attempted PC outcast hijacking of the Alberta party. Generally from a chief of staff, I'd hope his politics aren't the main driver of policy, that's the elected officials job, so a little odd to make so much news about it asside from the fact he has a public persona

[Bunk]

I don’t think he’ll be a driving force of policy at all. Mayor will set policy (she is a very policy driven leader), he’ll help maneuver it politically. That’s why you have a Stephen Carter in an office like that, not policy.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Aside from being a stupid, meaningless bit of moral grandstanding, that approach actually concerns the hell out of me. In the lower mainland, having everything the municipality does filtered through the lens of "climate emergency" language really just hurts people who aren't already settled. Try to get a house built there and the changes to building code explicitly for climate-change-oriented reasons has basically increased the cost of building to approximately double what it was ten years ago, in exchange for dubious or negligible environmental impact. You see municipalities demanding that solar panels be installed on city buildings even when the costs and recovered energy don't justify it because they want to "set an example". It is not a good mode for a municipal government to be in.

Lower mainland governments should be planning for a rising sea level. But expensive decarbonization without reciprocity is pissing away funds that could be used on mitigation. And the cities don't have authority to negotiate environmental treaties, so reciprocity is impossible.

At the global level, it's the reverse. Decarbonization is preferable to mitigation. But it's the federal government who should be engaging with that level.

[#-3]

Originally Posted by Bunk

I don’t think he’ll be a driving force of policy at all. Mayor will set policy (she is a very policy driven leader), he’ll help maneuver it politically. That’s why you have a Stephen Carter in an office like that, not policy.

I think that is what I was trying to say but not well, agreed.

from listening to 900 some of his podcasts, I don't know that he is that big of a policy stick in the mud, probably pretty willing to tow the company line.

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

I think a big part of that is how terrible Farkas is. I voted Nenshi every time, but am usually a right wing voter. This election had two choices and one of them was Farkas, so I think lots of people who would have preferred a right wing choice over Gondek picked her as the lesser of two evils. She probably benefited from the right wing leader being an imbecile.

If you're waiting for that to change, you're gonna have a bad time. Every right wing party in the world is heading into looney tune territory, and it's extending into municipal politics now. Next election don't be surprised to see Chu run for mayor and get significant support

[Slava]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

If you're waiting for that to change, you're gonna have a bad time. Every right wing party in the world is heading into looney tune territory, and it's extending into municipal politics now. Next election don't be surprised to see Chu run for mayor and get significant support

Lol, Chu is done. He might hang on to his seat on council, but there’s no possible way he wins again. Had that news come out a week earlier, he would have lost this time for sure.

[calgarygeologist]

I finally had a chance to work a bit with the election results data and to add coordinate data to the voting stations. I had to do that manually but I believe I tagged all the voting stations correctly.

I only looked at the votes cast for Gondek or Farkas and excluded all the other candidates for this. In terms of election day voting the voting stations that Farkas won are on the left in blue and the stations that Gondek won are in red on the right.




I also took the vote share between Farkas and Gondek and plotted them to see where the election day results indicated a narrow victory vs a runaway victory. On the left in grey are polling stations where either Farkas or Gondek had less than a 5% vote share victory and on the right in orange are the voting stations where Gondek had more than 66% of the vote against Farkas (Farkas had no voting stations with 66%+)

[MegaErtz]

On a side note, Nenshi has got to be wondering how he had to put up with a group of conservatives who employed delay tactics to stop his reforms for ELEVEN years, and now Gondek comes in with nine solid progressive votes from day one.

[OldDutch]

Originally Posted by MegaErtz

On a side note, Nenshi has got to be wondering how he had to put up with a group of conservatives who employed delay tactics to stop his reforms for ELEVEN years, and now Gondek comes in with nine solid progressive votes from day one.

I don't think Nenshi was a progressive, rather a centrist. I don't think he relished a council full of Farrells vs a council full of Demongs. He played the middle and compromised. Sure he was frustrated at times, but his reward was a long and successful career. He could work both sides.

I voted for Gondek, but I am concerned that a progressive council could be short lived. Swing too far to either side and holding the vote next go round will be tough.

Specifically this whole signal on climate emergency. The progressives' love it, but I can tell you most Calagrian's are protective of the industry.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calga...yoti-1.6221389

But here's the catch: policy ideology is about underlying left-right attitudes across lots of policy issues. And for Calgarians, it turns out that nearly all of our "conservatism" comes from conservative preferences in one area: energy policy.

Calgarians tend to have especially conservative positions on issues like pipeline construction and carbon taxes. Hardly surprising.

Gondek has a strong mandate and ability to enact, but she can't be her own worst enemy. It could be a short ride if so.

[Weitz]

The way taxes are likely to go up in this city over the next couple years I imagine a lot of people will be one and done this time around. Partly why so many people bailed in my opinion.