{"id":5212,"date":"2013-06-11T12:37:12","date_gmt":"2013-06-11T16:37:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=5212"},"modified":"2013-06-11T12:37:12","modified_gmt":"2013-06-11T16:37:12","slug":"after-miracle-victory-in-2010-nenshi-almost-unbeatable-in-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=5212","title":{"rendered":"After Miracle Victory in 2010, Nenshi Almost Unbeatable in 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Nenshi<\/a>
Nenshi could come out as an Argos fan and still win the next election in a cakewalk.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I expect this will be my only blog post on the 2013 Calgary Mayoral election. That’s because, despite recent rumblings about a bid by talk radio titan Dave Rutherford<\/a>, Naheed Nenshi appears to be almost unbeatable.<\/p>\n

I’ll admit to being wrong about Nenshi before – here’s<\/a> what I wrote a month before he won one of Canada’s most exciting municipal elections of the past decade:<\/p>\n

Naheed is brilliant and has, hands down, the best ideas of any candidate on how to run Calgary. So, of course, he will not win.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oops. <\/p>\n

If there’s ever a case study in not taking elections for granted, it’s Nenshi, who sat within the margin of error of 0% at the start of the campaign. So it’s understandable that the media<\/a> and political strategists<\/a> are taking Rutherford’s candidacy very seriously.<\/p>\n

The thing is, the ground was far more fertile for an upset in 2010 than it is today. That was a wide open mayoral race with no incumbent and a pair of deeply flawed frontrunners. This time we’re dealing with a re-election campaign in a city which has not voted out a sitting Mayor since the Flames moved from Atlanta. Since then, incumbents have received 80%, 93%, 90%, 92%, 73%, 82%, and 61% of the vote. If there’s one thing Calgarians like more than the Rocky Mountains and ragging on Edmonton, it’s re-electing their mayors.<\/p>\n

At this stage, all signs point towards Nenshi’s share of the vote in October falling within that historical range. A Leger poll <\/a>last November found 88% of Calgarians approve of his performance and 87% agree he deserves to be re-elected. This includes 51% who strongly <\/em>believe he should be re-elected.<\/p>\n

While there has been some recent controversy over Nenshi’s decision to hold a referendum<\/a> on how to use a $52 million property tax surplus which…zzzz….sorry, the sheer boredom and irrelevance of this issue put me to sleep for a second. Living in Toronto these days, it’s hard to believe something like that could even pass for “mildly controversial”.<\/p>\n

Yes, Canadian politics has been full of upsets in recent years. But most of these have taken the form of unpopular incumbents holding on to power. I’m at a loss to find an example of a popular incumbent losing<\/em>. Things can change in 4 months, but we’re dealing with a candidate who could alienate half his base and still win re-election. <\/p>\n

I don’t doubt that Dave Rutherford is well liked, respected, and could mobilize much of conservative Calgary. But Rutherford should look to city hall journalist Rick Bell who tried to take out a sitting mayor in 1998, only to finish with 8% of the vote.<\/p>\n

Naheed Nenshi from 3 years ago is the perfect example of why you should never take anything for granted in politics. But Naheed Nenshi from today is the perfect example of why sometimes <\/em>you really can predict the outcome with 99% confidence before the election. Dave Rutherford would be wise to save himself the time, money, and potential humiliation of fighting a campaign he realistically has no chance of winning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I expect this will be my only blog post on the 2013 Calgary Mayoral election. That’s because, despite recent rumblings about a bid by talk radio titan Dave Rutherford, Naheed Nenshi appears to be almost unbeatable. I’ll admit to being wrong about Nenshi before – here’s what I wrote a month before he won one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[141],"tags":[1370,1369,1044,1016],"class_list":["post-5212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-calgary-municipal-politics","tag-2013-calgary-mayoral-election","tag-dave-rutherford","tag-leger","tag-naheed-nenshi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5212"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5219,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5212\/revisions\/5219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}