With Edmonton's municipal election less than a year away, I thought I would take a quick look at the non-incumbent candidates who have declared their intentions to seek election to City Council in October 18, 2010. The election will be the first held under the new one-councillor per ward boundaries.
Brendan Van Alstine (@bvanalstine): The first candidate out of the starting gates for 2010, Brendan is seeking election in the new Ward 7. A social worker, he currently works for Edmonton's Pride Centre as the Youth Program Coordinator. I have known Brendan for a couple of years and I continue to admire his passion for public transit issues in Edmonton (he was a founding member of the Transit Riders Union of Edmonton and was a regular columnist on public transit issues for Metro Edmonton). He will be officially launching his campaign this weekend (more details).
Andrew Knack (@AndrewKnack): Declared candidate for the new Ward 1. Knack placed third against incumbents Karen Leibovici and Linda Sloan in 2007 and is also out of the gate for 2010 early. Along with Van Alstine, Knack participated in ChangeCamp Edmonton on October 17, 2009.
Hana Razga: Placed sixth in the hotly contested Ward 4 election in 2007. Razga declared her candidacy in the new Ward 8 on September 15, 2009 and this will be her eighth attempt at seeking elected office.
Dave Loken: On September 27, 2009, Loken informed me via email that he would be seeking election in Ward 3. Three years ago, I wrote that Loken (who was then running against Ward 2 incumbent Councillors Ron Hayter and Kim Krushell) was on my list to watch for 2010. He placed third in that election.
Friday, November 06, 2009
2010 city council candidates start their uphill climb.
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13 comments:
Your link for Dave Loken is broken. I guess he gave up that URL after the last campaign?
Just FYI.
Of these four only Van Alstine seems like a real threat to win anything.
Loken & Razga are both perennial NDP hack candidates and Loken's beholden to the Transit Union people. Between Sohi and Thiele I think City Council already has quite enough (2 too many even) of those types.
Andrew Knack seems to straddle the line of pseudo-serious candidate. His webpage was attrocious last time out and looks only marginally better now. Does this guy really think he looks good in those extreme closeups? If he's at all serious about this, he needs some design consultant help asap. Oh, and a real platform to run on.
Thanks, Brian. I will add the links. Good luck at the event tomorrow! I was hoping to make it, but I have a previous engagement!
Any news about 1 or more liberal mlas who were defeated in 2008 going municipal? Gibbons, Leiboviki and Sloan did it before and the appeal might still be there for others to follow in their footsteps.
Bill Bonko or Weslyn Mather would be good additions to City Council.
It would be a good idea for any incumbents to bow out now. Not since the last council of Reimer & Gomberg have the citizens of this city been so ticked. Does anyone remember what happened to the last Reimer & Gomberg council? I think every last member was blown out except for Michael Phair.
People are pissed.
-Secretive meetings to sell our most valuable assets.
-Boondoggle infrastructure projects.
-Councillors wanting everyone to ride bikes on sidewalks.
-Closing the Muni and displacing 900 jobs (was anyone 'brave' enough to campaign on that last time out?).
-LRT planning that stresses the need to bring along your acoustic guitar to sing Kumbaya, my Lord, Kumbaya.
-A Mayor that purposely fudged the 'Arena Report' to NOT mention that arenas have been built privately in YVR, YYZ and YUL.
Oh, Don Iveson is going to win his ward in 2010. He has received 10-1 e-mails telling him it is so.
Regular Edmontonians are not pissed off. City Councillors have been doing a good job. LRT expansion is happening. Business is growing. Young people are choosing to stay in Edmonton.
A tiny perfect minority of uber wealthy are pissed off that they can't fly their lear jets out of the City Centre airport after 2030. An even smaller minority of hemp wearing, pot smoking, NDP lefties are still pissed off that they missed the debate in 1995 when EPCOR was founded.
Strange bedfellows will cry wolf. The extreme fringes will never be happy. City Council has been doing a good job.
Is Mandel running again?
Poor Duke. Have us uber wealthy been repressing you?
If a member of council sees the need to sell Epcor, they should have the guts campaign on it.
If a member of council wants to close the Muni, they should have the guts to campaign on it.
The overriding thing that people say about Mandel is that he has a 'vision'. Well, so did Nostradamus and Joan of Arc. I'd prefer that he had a plan. Other people say he's 'hard working'. Well, so is a washing machine.
It turns out that the social media campaign to close the Muni will be a key factor in ANOTHER upcoming lawsuit against the city and EAA. It seems that the several councillors predjudiced the process by publicly stating that they were swayed by e-mails, as opposed to public hearings where the majority of presenters wanted it kept open. The problem is that these emails were, and are still not, a matter of public record. I'll let you figure out the rest.
Duke, what do you expect from these people? Half of them drooled over George W. Bush when he was in town last month and the other half think that Brian Mason is a reasonable moderate.
Let me get this straight, someone or some group is planning on suing the COE and the EAA because Councillors were influenced by hundreds of emails from citizens of Edmonton urging the closure of the Airport? Since when are public hearings binding?
If there are people still passionately opposed to the decision to close the ECCA over a phased period of time they should run a pro-airport candidates in the next election.
Dave has a point. Public Hearings are non-binding and most Edmontonians can't afford to take an entire day off to wait for a public hearing. The e-Mails are fine.
Further to Anon 3:09's point above, e-mail input goes a long way to address the "democratic deficit" created by some people (and organizations) having the time and resources to attend public hearings, and others not.
Yes, it's relatively easy to fire off an e-mail, but that goes for all proponents OR opponents of a particular issue or initiative, so it's probably a more accurate measure of the PUBLIC mood than hearings dominated by vested interests with the time and money to participate.
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