'2 to 1': Calgary mayor-elect Gondek will be bolstered by majority-progressive council, say pundits
'I heard a lot of people saying they really wanted change'
Calgary city hall watchers anticipate a more cohesive city council following Monday's vote, with many newly elected councillors sharing priorities with mayor-elect Jyoti Gondek.
One pollster estimates progressive-leaning councillors outnumber conservative-leaning candidates by roughly two to one, and others see an opportunity for Gondek to quickly push forward on key priorities such as COVID-19 response and infrastructure investments.
"What I think it is for mayor-elect Gondek, is a great starting point," campaign strategist Zain Velji told CBC Calgary's News at 11.
"She's got six to seven solid votes on most things she wants and if she runs her office like a political office she can sway three to five more."
Velji previously worked on Naheed Neshi's campaign.
Looking at those leading or elected, it's clear this council will also have more women and candidates who are BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of colour) than recent councils. It has only three incumbents but the mayor and two new councillors have previous council experience.
CBC News talked with with several community leaders, strategists and pundits as the final votes were counted. Here's what they had to say.
A progressive-leaning council
There are no party affiliations in municipal politics. But based on each winner's platforms and endorsements, pollster Janet Brown says she sees a fairly left-leaning council.
"On balance, I think we've got more progressive councillors than we do conservative councillors, maybe by a two-to-one margin," said Brown. "That will be good very news for Gondek because this will be an easier council for her to wrangle and get on side with her priorities."
Gondek won with more support than any of the polls predicted. She had 45 per cent of the vote with 256 of 259 polls reporting. But that didn't surprise Brown.
"As soon as the results started coming in, I sort of laughed at myself and I thought: 'You know, this happens election after election.' We think it's going to be a close race ... but Calgary doesn't really have a history of electing conservative mayors."
The political action group Lead Calgary endorsed candidates whose platforms prioritized cutting property taxes and restoring fiscal responsibility. That includes winners Dan McLean (Ward 13), Peter Demong (Ward 14), Andre Chabot (Ward 10), Terry Wong (Ward 7) and Sean Chu (Ward 4).
It will be a mixed council that represents the political diversity of Calgary, added Velji, saying the actual vote split will likely shift from issue to issue. But Gondek is also hard to paint as either right or left.
"We really don't know how she lands on certain things."
WATCH | Hear what CBC Calgary's political panel had to say about last night's election.
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Newcomers but with experience
"I heard a lot of people saying they really wanted change, and I think that's what we're seeing now," said David Hartwick, a longtime volunteer with the Northern Hills Community Association.
In the ward races, voters turfed two incumbents and other races were close. Joe Magliocca and Diane Colley-Urquhart each lost, coming third in their races, while Gian-Carlo Carra squeaked in a win by just 152 votes.
Ward 4 incumbent Sean Chu, who has served as a city councillor since 2013, led his closest rival DJ Kelly by a margin of 706 votes with 28/30 stations reporting as of 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday, according to Elections Calgary.
But Hartwick says those worried about a loss of institutional memory should take heart. Gondek is not a newcomer and two of the newly elected councillors have council experience. Newcomers Andre Chabot and Richard Pootmans have five previous terms on council between them.
- WATCH | Calgary mayor-elect Jyoti Gondek delivers her victory speech:
Out-going councillor Shane Keating was quite worried about the high turnover. But not Monday night.
"I've very excited and extremely happy," he said, looking at the results.
"You know, we've seen four years of this picking and snipping," he said. "I've always said that if you get the right people, it doesn't matter of political affiliations. I think you're going to have a great council coming forward.… We have individuals who have master's degrees. We have individuals who are who are educators, engineers or have another master's degree in administration."
Keating will be replaced in Ward 12 by Evan Spencer, who previously worked in his constituency office.
Making history
Calgary's new council will have six women compared with three on the previous council.
"That's obviously not parity but it's a whole lot better than we've done in recent past. At present, six of 15 are racialized Calgarians. That's a high water mark for a city that has a pretty big history of electing only white people," Maclean's correspondent Jason Markusoff said on News at 11.
Gondek's parents immigrated from Punjab, India. Edmonton also elected a mayor of south Asian descent in Amarjeet Sohi, who was a former councillor and a former cabinet minister.
Anila Lee Yuen, who grew up in Calgary as a child of south Asian parents, says that's a big deal for young people who need to see themselves in community leaders.
"Twelve-year-old me, my eyes would be just bulging out of my head right now because they look like me," said Lee Yuen. "The leaders of our province — our mayors look like me.… They grew up with similar cultural context as I did, and I never thought that that would happen when I was 12. And they've got good policy."
Gondek is also Calgary's first female mayor.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Author of the article: Dylan Short
Publishing date:Oct 19, 2021 •
A political newcomer once known for representing her country will now represent the north Calgary Ward 3 at city hall for the next four years.
Jasmine Mian will be one of several newcomers on city council after successfully winning her bid to fill the seat vacated by Jyoti Gondek who handedly won the mayoral race on Monday, defeating her main competitors Jeremy Farkas and Jeff Davison by a wide margin.
Mian said she had been going door to door to attract voters to her message of navigating the pandemic and continuing to support developing communities in north-central Calgary and that voters gave her a clear response.
“I think that I was given a very clear mandate by the voters of Ward 3 to run a positive campaign to collaborate with the rest of the councillors on some of the big challenges we have,” said Mian.
Mian, who represented Canada as a wrestler at the 2016 Olympics, said representing her constituents will be the honour of a lifetime. She said her first priority, once the new council is sworn in, is to continue to navigate through the COVID-19 pandemic. She noted that the most important ward-specific issues are ensuring services and infrastructure continue to grow.
Mian was among eight candidates vying for the Ward 3 seat.
Coming up just short with the second most votes was Brent Trenholm. Speaking to Postmedia before polls closed, he said he had knocked on over 20,000 doors in the past year and felt he had the support to be successful.
“It’s been a lot of fun,” said Trenholm, as votes were still rolling in. “It’s been a long grind . . . But, I’ll accept what’s there. And wish the next person well.”
Trenholm thanked everyone who voted for him, as well as his campaign team for supporting him. He said Mian will have a tough job over the next four years.
Author of the article:Don Braid • Calgary Herald
Publishing date:Oct 19, 2021 •
Jyoti Gondek at her campaign headquarters after being elected as Calgary Mayor on Monday, October 18, 2021. PHOTO BY AZIN GHAFFARI/POSTMEDIAArticle content
As election results poured in Monday night it was soon clear that Calgary’s new mayor is Jyoti Gondek, who only a couple of months ago stood barely above 10 per cent in polling support.
With Amarjeet Sohi’s victory in Edmonton, the province will once again have two relatively progressive mayors as counterpoints to Premier Jason Kenney’s UCP government.
This time, both mayors are people of colour. They are also Canadians of Punjabi heritage. And Gondek will be Calgary’s first female in the job since we started electing mayors in 1884.
If this doesn’t finally obliterate national stereotypes of Alberta as some kind of racist backwater, perhaps nothing ever will. But this is the look of Alberta’s great cities today — tolerant, forward-looking and ready to deal realistically with social problems.
Gondek says her first job will be to “meet with all the councillors elected tonight and talk about how we can collaborate to move the city forward.
“I also look forward to working with the provincial government. Our future requires us to work together.”
But she also said that when necessary, she’ll speak firmly for Calgary in dealing with a government that has often been bitterly critical of city hall.
Gondek overtook Jeromy Farkas on her way to a thumping victory. And her biggest ally, although he surely didn’t mean to be, may have been Jeff Davison.
Davison was surprisingly strong and likely took considerable support away from Farkas.
Davison also painted himself as a true conservative, but one who can collaborate and build rather than pick fights and say no to almost everything that comes out of city hall.
The result showed exactly what was happening when Farkas sent his open letter last Friday , asking supporters of Davison and Brad Field to support him instead.
Farkas must have known that he was losing votes to these more reasonable choices, and made one last desperate attempt to hold the conservative vote.
In the end, Field also did remarkably well after a long campaign that went largely unnoticed for months, but finally showed him as a caring and able candidate.
Farkas is just the latest in a string of ideological conservatives who have failed to win the mayor’s chair. Ric McIver, now a provincial minister, lost to Naheed Nenshi in 2010. In 2017, Nenshi beat Bill Smith, who proudly offered himself as a conservative.
Now, Farkas goes down despite ardent support from UCP types and Calgary’s old conservative guard. It shows that many Calgarians want their city government to be independent of the province, and focus mainly on urban issues rather than partisan agendas.
But there was one big win for Kenney — the referendum calling for removal of equalization from the Constitution carried with a 58 per cent majority in Calgary.
All other municipalities have yet to be tallied and the final result will be announced by Elections Alberta on Oct. 26 .
But even with Edmonton expected to oppose the move, Calgary’s 58 per cent, along with expected majorities in rural Alberta, should carry the question for Kenney.
Otherwise, the voters’ choices failed to move council in a conservative direction. Several progressive councillors were elected, along with comeback kids Richard Pootmans and Andre Chabot .
Scandal-ridden Joe Magliocca got clobbered in Ward 2 by Jennifer Wyness . Veteran Diane Colley-Urquhart lost decisively in Ward 13 to Dan McLean .
In an election where 10 seats were empty, even incumbents lost despite being almost invulnerable in previous elections.
The voters clearly wanted to clean house. What they came up with, according to Stephen Carter, Gondek’s campaign manager, is a “pragmatic group” that will be able to work together.
Carter is a comeback story of his own. He played a role in Nenshi’s first victory in 2010 and was behind Alison Redford’s drive to be Alberta’s first female premier, serving as her chief of staff for a time before she was forced to resign.
Now he’s back in the game and could well play a senior role in Jyoti Gondek’s city hall.
It will be much different from Naheed Nenshi’s last council, but hopefully infused with new energy and a wish for genuine collaboration in the city’s interests.
Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald
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