Quote:
Originally Posted by Radley77
Yeah, I didn't really buy into Ric McIver's argument that he split the conservative vote. There were so many issues that Ric and Barb had different points of view on (Ric being anti-PlanIt versus Barb being supportive of PlanIt). Barb had also gained support from previous NDP MLA Bob Hawkesworth. Ric had called himself a "common-sense conservative, whereas Barb was a "fiscal conservative with a social heart." I think Ric and Barb had different brands of conservatism as well as campaign policies and strategies, so to say that the vote was split I think is a bit too simplistic.
One of the things I really liked about Nenshi is he makes an honest attempt to understand the issues and thinks about outcomes and formulates a plan based on that rather than thinking in terms of left or right politics.
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It seemed that most of the movement at the end of the campaign, beyond undecideds settling, was from Higgins to Nenshi. The any one but McIver vote shifted pretty hard when Higgins ran into some problems and Nenshi looked like he could actually win. McIver's support stayed incredibly stable during the entire campaign. I know some of his supporters were wondering why he did not move against Nenshi during the campaign but I have a feeling that was by design. They needed Nenshi to become just viable enough to drop Higgins' support below their's. They just did not count on that momentum then carrying Nenshi so far. If they had actually moved hard against Nenshi it would either work, allowing Higgins to remain the front runner, or legitimized Nenshi to thoroughly, turning him into the any one but McIver candidate.
What a lot of the commentariat did not seem to grasp was that this was not McIver's election to lose. He appealed, very strongly, to a certain segment of the population that, while loud, does not represent a majority of the city. A lot of people may have disagreed with the Peace Bridge but they very much agreed with the general direction that the city was moving in and was for the city building infrastructure; a lot of people may have been mad at council but they were mad at aldermen other than their own and the polarized atmosphere that McIver was at least as responsible for as Bronconnier. For McIver to have won he would have needed a much more fractured playing field. Something like Higgins, Nenshi, and Hawkesworth all splitting the other two thirds of the vote. It did not happen.
The real race was for the two thirds of the vote that went to Nenshi and Higgins. They both shared two important strengths. First, they were both representative of the way the city was moving. They were both pro-Plan It, generally supportive of what Bronconnier had been pushing for regarding transit expansion and such, and tied to a youthful, dynamic image of a city that wants culture. Secondly, they were both free from the baggage of some of the bitter fights that marked the last council session. What made the difference was Nenshi's ideas and attitudes. He was the better candidate and he ran the better campaign. It just took a little luck to get him into a decent position and he was able to capitalize on those strengths, placing him in the mayor's chair today.
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I think Nenshi is just further proof that these one-dimensional labels are in fact idiotic and meaningless.
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