Nomination day for Calgary’s municipal election has come and gone. With an open race for the mayor’s chair and four wards it’s a packed field. Candidates lined up inside the old city hall cash nomination papers and signatures in hand ready for the real campaign.
At last count 15 contenders had filed their papers to run for mayor — they still have 24 hours to pull out so this could change. (The full list can be seen here .)
Last week several mayoral candidates dropped out and today a few more were added to that list including Liberal MLA Kent Hehr. A recent poll gave Hehr only 4.1 per cent support — not enough to keep him in the race.
"This business is full of people who delude themselves and I didn’t want to be one of them" says Hehr. "Those numbers were pretty grim but at some point in time you’ve got to get out of the way."
Although Hehr wouldn’t officially endorse Nenshi who is polling with eight per cent support — well behind front runners Ric McIver (43 per cent) and Barb Higgins (28 per cent) — he did say he was impressed with Nenshi.
Even without an official endorsement one should expect Nenshi’s numbers to get a boost with Hehr’s withdrawal. Nenshi touted his outsider status and knowledge of municipal politics shortly after filing his papers.
"We want an outsider but we don’t need someone with an enormously high learning curve to be able to take a year or two years to figure out how the job works" says Nenshi. "I don’t know where the mayor’s bathroom is but I do know a lot about how city hall works."
He applauded rival Barb Higgins for her work in the community but says she’s never been to a council meeting managed employees or a budget. "This job is bigger than that and we have to have to have someone in there that can do those things" says Nenshi."