Municipal Elections are occurring in Alberta next Monday, October 15. Ho hum so far. But for coverage of Mayoral, Aldermanic and School Board candidates from a progressive perspective check out;
Calgary- Enlightened Savage
(R)Edmonton-daveberta
Living in Ward 4 in (R)Edmonton I have to agree with davebera that the best team that has a chance to replace outgoing Michael Phair and incumbent Jane Batty are Henderson and Cardinal.
It's a race with 15 candidates, many of them are nowhere close to running a winning campaign let alone standing a chance to get elected.
One though that does is Hana Razga. Unfortunately her campaign is lost amongst the gaggle of candidates. I note daveberta does link to Dipper Hana Razga.
Unfortunately she has not had the media profile she deserves in this race. Nor did she get labour's endorsement, that went to Cardinal. Like Cardinal she is a candidate concerned about the ward's economic development disparities.
Henderson is a Liberal, Cardinal has the backing not only of labour but also some Dippers, in particular former City Councilor and Alberta NDP Chief of Staff; Sherry McKibben. This kind of political division of forces in municipal elections is problematic.
By the way, Cardinal has an interesting campaign manager, Sherry McKibben. McKibben had a brief one-year stint on council in the mid-1990s, winning a byelection and then getting defeated in the general election. Then for years she was the high-profile and hard-working manager of HIV Edmonton.
The reality is that despite the appearance of not being driven by political parties all municipal elections are extensions of party politics. Which is why I believe municipal politics should be party politics. That way you would not have two dippers running in Ward 4.
What would happen if . . . party politics came to municipalities? by David Siegel and Eugene Plawiuk
The Next City asked David Siegel, associate professor of politics, and Eugene Plawiuk, the NDP's co-chair of strategy and communications in Alberta's recent provincial election in 1997, to comment The Next City September 21/1997
For public school board trustee labour supports Dr. Marlene Spencer in Ward G which is also the ward I live in.
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Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Redmonton, Calgary,
I'll be voting for Razga and Cardinal. Cardinal isn't an NDP member (I don't think so, anyway), so it's not really like there's two dippers running. Besides we get two votes for councillor, so even if there were party slates, I'd imagine that each party would try to field two candidates per ward.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I agree with you about party slates. If we had an Edmonton version of COPE (Lite or Classic, doesn't matter), I wouldn't be struggling for what to do with my mayoral vote. Mandel's all style and no substance, and his downtown arena plan and anti-environmental opposition to the idea of high-speed train between Edmonton and Calgary is idiotic. But what protest vote could I make that would send the right message? As it is, Koziak's the only serious enough challenger to put a scare into Mandel and seems to agree with me about the arena. However, if he's to the right of Mandel, that probably won't send the right message. If I had a Dipper mayoral vote, even if that person weren't likely to win, I could at least know I'm sending a good message.