An article that sums up last night's debate:
Quote:
Nenshi warns of 'colder, meaner, smaller, elite-run city' at debate as rival Smith urges voters to fire mayor
Annalise Klingbeil, Calgary Herald
Published on: October 3, 2017
Calgary’s empty downtown core, tech giant Amazon and non-residential property taxes were front and centre at a mayoral debate hosted by the Calgary Chamber of Commerce on Monday evening.
Only three candidates in the race for mayor — incumbent Naheed Nenshi, businessman and lawyer Bill Smith, and Ward 10 Coun. Andre Chabot — were invited to participate in the economic-focused forum featuring questions from business owners, held at the Palace Theatre downtown.
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Full article here:
http://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news...rival-smith-urges-citizens-to-fire-mayor
Here's my take of how the campaign is unfolding and why I'm concerned for Nenshi's chance at re-election (Full disclosure, I plan on voting for Nenshi). Team Bill Smith is backed by a lot of political warriors from the PCs. They may not know how to govern but these people know how to campaign and they have settled on a fairly simple strategy.
1. Find a vanilla candidate that doesn't have much of a strong political personality of their own. Bill Smith is that person. He appears to be a likeable fellow. He's a person people can see themselves voting for and most importantly he stays on script. Anyone who thinks that he is campaigning on his ideas are fooling themselves. The article by Don Braid not too long ago that talked about how handlers were holding up talking point signs during interviews shows that Bill Smith isn't conveying his ideas. Bill Smith is simply fronting the old PC political club that have now been out of power for 2 years and desperately want it back.
2. Push that the candidate as the natural alternative choice and find conservative friendly voices in the media to push that point. Why was Bill Smith seen as the natural #2 candidate in people's minds? In my opinion it was because opinion columns by the Rick Bells and Licia Corbellas of the world made him the #2 candidate and the rest of the media picked up on the narrative and ran with it. Prior to a few of those columns nobody I talked to even knew who Bill Smith was and those who were against Nenshi were planning on voting for Chabot or an alternative candidate. Those vote shifted to Smith after the columns were published although those same people still had no clue who Bill Smith was or why he was or should be considered the #2 candidate.
3. Keep the #2 candidate theme going and give your vanilla candidate one good quote per appearance. Almost everybody I've talked to who has seen Bill Smith perform at a debate says that he is an absolutely terrible debater and his performance has cost him the votes of those in the audience. But you wouldn't know that because almost all the media coverage from the debates (including the article I quoted) feature one or two strong quotable lines that he delivered (usually in his prepared closing remarks). The result is the articles make Bill Smith appear much stronger than he actually is and people begin to buy into the image of the candidate rather than the candidate himself (or how Trump got elected 101)
4. Luck out with a candidate who thinks he's a shoe-in for re-election. Unfortunately this means Nenshi. I think the Nenshi campaign has been running something close to a 'front-runners' campaign when they should be running a campaign that puts a lot more pressure on Bill Smith and trying to expose how little he's actually brought to the table in this campaign. Campaign as if there's a real chance you might lose. Sadly (for me) I don't think the Nenshi campaign is doing this.
Long story short, I think Bill Smith stands a real chance at winning because of a strong campaign team and not because of what he will actually deliver to Calgarians. He is being packaged and delivered to Calgary voters who may be tiring of the status quo and the campaign is betting that most voters won't delve beneath the surface when it comes to his campaign ideas. The fact that many members of Ready2Engage are part of his campaign means I have no respect for his team and personally the last thing I want to see is that small inner-circle trying to shape Calgary. I don't always see eye to eye with Chabot but I feel he has earned and should be rewarded with conservative votes long before Bill Smith.
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