MAYORAL RACE STARTS TO TAKE SHAPE IN EDMONTON

Low key, low energy mayoral race starts to take shape in Edmonton

Dave Cournoyer

There are 87 days until municipal election day in Alberta and Edmonton's sleepy mayoral race is beginning to take shape.

With Mayor Amarjeet Sohi not running for re-election after serving one term in the office, what looks like a fairly open field of current and former city councillors has emerged in the race to replace him.

With the city facing an addictions and mental health crisis, a pitch battle over zoning and infill in mature neighbourhoods, huge population growth that is putting immense pressure on the city’s public services, infrastructure, schools and hospitals, and a provincial government is openly hostile to the current city council, whoever is in the mayor’s chair for the next four years will face a rough and challenging time.

Look who’s running

• Former city councillor Michael Walters is the most recent candidate to enter the race after launching his campaign earlier this week. Walters served two terms on council from 2013 to 2021 and returns to politics after three and half years as a Senior Director of Strategy for Berlin Communications.
• Walters’ political experience predates his time on city council, having worked as an organizer for the Community Action Project and the Greater Edmonton Alliance, and running for the NDP nomination in Edmonton-Norwood in 2001 and carrying the Alberta Party banner in Edmonton-Rutherford in the 2012 provincial election. He backed candidate Michael Oshry in the 2021 mayoral election.
• Two-term south Edmonton city councillor Tim Cartmell is the only mayoral candidate to embrace the financial and organizational advantages of the new municipal political party system. Cartmell has been positioning himself for a mayoral run for most of the past four years.
• Cartmell had a head start in this race but his decision to go on vacation instead of showing up to vote to change the city’s divisive zoning bylaw has some political watchers questioning whether he is mayor material.
• Cartmell’s Better Edmonton Party has appointed candidates in all 12 city council wards. North Edmonton councillor Karen Principe, who recently ran for the federal Conservative nomination in Edmonton Griesbach, is the only incumbent councillor to join Cartmell’s slate.
• Three-term west Edmonton councillor Andrew Knack was the second major candidate in this race. Knack is well-known in political circles for his extensive community outreach work in his ward.
• “So far progressives and centrists seem to have coalesced around Mr. Knack,” wrote AlbertaPolitics.ca columnist David Climenhaga in his description of the race. Before Knack joined the mayoral race he was rumoured to be hoping to win an NDP nomination for the next provincial election.
• Former federal politician Rahim Jaffer was a surprise entry into the race. Jaffer was the MP for Edmonton Strathcona and a rising star in the Reform, Canadian Alliance and Conservative parties from 1997 until 2008 when he lost re-election and saw his political career take an unceremonious nosedive. Sixteen years later, he now runs a restaurant on Whyte Avenue and is running on a platform of reconnecting with Edmontonians and “reviving” the city.
• Jaffer is hosting a series of virtual and in-person town hall meetings to connect with voters.
• Former councillor Tony Caterina is also in the race. Caterina served four terms on city council representing northeast Edmonton before boundary redistribution in 2021 squeezed him out of his former ward and he was defeated in a downtown Edmonton ward.
• Caterina appears to be stepping into the shoes of former councillor Mike Nickel, who was the curmudgeonly right-winger in the last mayoral election.
• Paediatric dental surgeon Omar Mohammad is running a thoughtful and unconventional campaign by delivering his message to Edmontonians through music videos and podcast interviews.
• Abdul Malik Chukwudi is running in his second mayoral race. He earned 0.58 percent of the vote in the 2021 election.

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Who’s on first?

With no public polling released and most Edmontonians likely not paying much attention to the election right now, it’s hard to say who is actually leading the pack. At this point we’ve entered the invisible primary phase of the campaign, with donors, organizers and opinion-makers probably being the groups most interested in the race.

With the exception of Caterina, who has staked out a position as the most right-wing candidate of the race, it’s hard to point out many big policy differences between the pack of moderate centrist (and middle-aged male) candidates running on platforms that mostly focus on affordability, public safety and better city management. At this point the big differences appear to be mostly about style and vibes.

Political parties at city hall

This will be the first municipal election in decades with official political parties on the municipal ballot. Unlike provincial or federal political parties, which are organized around party members and local organizations, the municipal political parties introduced by the UCP government exist mostly as fundraising and organizing entities that allow slates of candidates to pool money and resources.

With no real demand from voters for political parties at the city level, the UCP government was forced to create a structure that gave financial incentive for candidates to form these slates.

The response to the new political party rules can be described as lukewarm at best. Cartmell is the only mayoral candidate to embrace the financial advantages of a slate. Cartmell’s Better Edmonton Party has appointed candidates in all 12 city council wards, including north Edmonton councillor Karen Principe. How united the slate is and whether Cartmell as party leader can actually enforce discipline in its ranks is questionable.

The only other municipal political party, the right-wing Principled Accountable Coalition for Edmonton (PACE), has named a slate of council candidates but has not named a mayoral candidate. The PACE Party is spearheaded by Doug Main, a retired television news anchor who served as the Progressive Conservative MLA for Edmonton-Parkallen from 1989 to 1993. Main’s PACE Party merged with the TapYeg Party created by gondola enthusiast and past federal NDP candidate Jeffrey Hansen-Carlson.

The two slates are running candidates in the election but there appears to be some serious questions if the Municipal Government Act prohibits city councillors from forming formal caucuses like the ones that exist in the provincial legislature and federal parliament.

With Principe running under Cartmell’s party banner, all other incumbent councillors who are running for re-election — Michael Janz, Ashley Salvador, Anne Stevenson, Erin Rutherford, Aaron Paquette, Keren Tang, Jo-Anne Wright, and Jennifer Rice — will be listed as Independent candidates on the ballot.