Farkas defeats Gondekļ¼ Calgary Elections 2025
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Summary
Breaking down what we know, what we don't know, and what we have no idea about the results of the municipal election in Calgary, Alberta. Plus, a look at why the election is a dog s breakfast, and who's going to win the mayor's race?
Transcript
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Good morning, I'm Derek Phil, the Brandt publisher of the Western Standard. It's October 21st,
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2025. We're at it first thing in the morning today, still having my coffee here. We're
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breaking down the, what we know at least, of the Calgary municipal election results.
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We decided not to do live stream last night because, well, we just, we're not expected
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to have any of the numbers and as of this morning well we've got some of the numbers and we've got
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a pretty good idea but it's still a lot up in the air so we're going to break down what we know
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what we don't know no knowns known unknowns etc uh i've got with me our uh western standard
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oh my goodness i'm having a feedback loop here shut up eric there we go well i've always wanted
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to say that you're not allowed you're not allowed shut up mike okay all right we got uh western
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standard city hall columnist mike thomas and western standard news editor and former city
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hall editor of for calgary city hall with the calgary sun dave naylor morning morning so go jays
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go uh you know the last time i cared about baseball i think i was about seven years old
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and it was the chase of the World Series in 1993.
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Okay, so yeah, we didn't even bother with this last night,
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There's only one thing we know for absolutely certain.
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So beautiful. That was, I think, for non-left-wing Calgarians, just the most important thing.
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Gondak's gone. So much confusion about who people should vote for in the mayor's race.
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I mean, the newsroom here, we racked our brains to the very last minute.
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Who's the best candidate? We still don't even really have a clear answer necessarily.
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But we all just knew one thing. Gondak's got to go.
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So she has gone down to defeat as the first sort of ā technically, I guess there was a successor of Ralph Klein, lost an election.
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They were just made mayor by the council as an interim mayor.
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But this is the first truly incumbent mayor since 1980 to lose.
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I'm not sure the last time an incumbent mayor has come in third place.
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don't know but you know she buried herself bad decisions going woke so dei um with with
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those counselors that she had were aiding and abetting her they just asked for it interesting
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that uh the majority of gondex gang bailed out this year people like karra and walcott who were
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the the preachers of the party uh said that's enough and walcott was only there for one term
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Okay, well, let's kind of go through the mayor's race.
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The council race is still a dog's breakfast because counting is taking a much longer time.
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But they have to check your ID now, which seems like a pretty reasonable thing to do.
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But because of the Canada Post strike, no one had voter cards.
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That was actually, I think, the big thing, drawing the big delays in voting.
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The other thing, I don't know about your poll, but the other thing is that if you were voting for a councillor, for mayor, and school board.
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That the people behind the desk were printing your name out.
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So depending on who you got, that's how long it took for them to write it down, which really slowed things down.
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If you got a name like Fildebrandt or the incorrect spelling of Mike, it could take a while.
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So anyway, that's why we don't have all the results.
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We do have 380 of 380 polls reporting for the mayor's race, Dave.
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We do not have anywhere close to that for the council races.
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I'd say on average, there's between 14 and 18 polls reporting of 60-odd in each of the wards.
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So in some of them, we'll go through them after the mayor's race.
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In some of them, we've got a pretty good idea of who's very likely to win.
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Not enough polls reporting in, and the race is tight.
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We've got it all in, but there's a definite recount here because it's a nail-biter.
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So the great news first, incumbent mayor Jody Gondek went down to defeat with 71,397 votes, third place.
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Fourth place, despite all the polls, that campaign push showing it'd be very different.
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Jeff Davison, it was a respectable, like it was a kind of a four-way race-ish.
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Or actually, no, five feet, because he's actually not far ahead of Thiessen.
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yeah so brian theason the calgary party so for those who don't know there's political parties
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now uh dave once you break down three parties well you've got the uh the calgary party which
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i guess strangely would be the liberal party right mike and then a couple of uh uh better
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communities uh communities first which would be the conservatives yeah well there's two conservatives
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yeah uh abc yeah a better category a better caliber yeah no wonder people are confused on
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the conservative yeah so yeah and uh you know brian theason the the so-called liberal candidate
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you know he did okay 40 000 votes and uh davidson in third place uh as all the uh
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sorry fourth place as all the polls were saying uh then he wasn't but he wasn't he was not the
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official candidate of the abc party but he was endorsed by the abc parts yeah and then uh the uh
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the poor miss gondek in 71 000 still a good chunk of votes right and then you got to the uh uh
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farkas and uh sonia sharp basically you know they're it took them two days to count the first
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time it's going to take them several more days to count the recounts so yeah it's going to be it
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It could be in limbo for a couple more days yet.
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You know, recounts normally don't change the initial result because, you know, some votes will flip.
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But they'll flip in both directions, you know, or they'll go through and say,
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this ballot is spoiled, like I had to spoil my school board trustee ballot because I had just
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no idea. I didn't see a single sign for them. You know, I always vote on who does the teachers
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union endorse, and then I vote for the next guy on the ballot. They didn't endorse anyone in my
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area, so I just spoiled my ballot. But sometimes, you know, the candidates and the scrutineers will
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argue that no, this should count for this candidate or not, et cetera. It normally comes
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out as a wash. Sometimes it gets overturned, but it's very rare that a recount actually
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overturns the result. But Sharpe could win. This is really, really close.
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I mean, it would need several hundred votes to overturn. And normally on a recount, you
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maybe get a handful, but I don't think you're going to see this amount.
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And voter turnout was down significantly in this, despite Calgary having a bigger population
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now than four years ago i mean a lot of new people come in uh but uh even the gross not just voter
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turnout as a percentage but even as a gross number is down i think yeah um i would attribute that
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my own non-scientific opinion would be it was just so damn confusing a lot of people just didn't know
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who to vote for i think that would be attributed to to that everybody's talking about dolly wall
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But I think it was more of a not sure who all these people are.
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Despite there being a party system, which is supposed to clarify it.
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I think it's going to take a couple election cycles
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That's normally the case in any place where it's introduced.
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um but you know in you know four years ago Gondek was the clear left-wing candidate
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Barkas was the clear right-wing candidate and then you had Davison as like kind of a mushier
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soft in the middle uh this time it was it was a dog's breakfast uh no one really knew who to vote
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for so I think a lot of people just didn't vote or they just kind of randomly picked one of the
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Okay, well, you know, we're going to send someone down to Jeremy Farkas' headquarters
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I'm interested, actually, I didn't get a response to you.
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um uh you wrote the headline that a gondek withdraws from the race did you say she withdraws
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i did first because i'm doing i was doing it so fast but then i went back okay she conceded yes
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i changed okay yeah i was like you don't get to withdraw after the ballots are counted
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okay i just i was so surprised that she came in and said okay i'm done um well she doesn't have
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to deal with it today no but so i just thought i better get that up there and i for some reason
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withdrawal came out yeah okay okay that makes a bit makes a bit more sense i was like no you're
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not allowed to withdraw after the ballots are counted i realized that after i looked at it
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okay it was late you were working later than the rest of us so i it's okay all right um but yeah
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so she's she's conceded uh but i'm sure today sonja sharp and jeremy fargus are both going to
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hold press availability uh i would not expect sonja sharp to concede she should not concede
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send anything out very soon about having a meeting or even wanting to talk about it yet.
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Well, Farkas, like last night, we didn't have enough results. I mean, he was leading the whole
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night, but not by a lot. But now we have the unofficial results. He is the unofficial winner
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of the election. I think he should likely announce something, and he should probably begin at least
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a tentative transition team. I would think behind the scenes, what I'm saying, though,
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is that I don't know if they will hold a meeting with the press and say anything.
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They've got nothing really to say except well-fought battle.
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Sonia Sharp, I think, if anyone should hold an availability of some kind,
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it should be Sonia Sharp to say, okay, we'll accept the results,
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but we're hanging in for the recount because she still has a shot.
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She could also in that meeting talk about all of the community first candidates because she's the de facto leader of the party.
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So, Mayor, we've got the most clear idea, I think.
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um let's talk just briefly about that about where what kind of mayor he's gonna be he ran he was the
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clear conservative last time i've known jeremy a long time this time it seemed you know i've always
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he went on his forrest gump run and you know he you know uh he came back and you know somewhat
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different um he some have argued to me that no no he's still the same jeremy just his language is
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less strident and he's just more polished and by the book now less off the cuff uh others say no
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no he's just no longer a conservative at all um you know i interviewed him here and he made the
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case his principles have not changed he just maybe has learned and matured a bit i don't know where
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you come down did we did calgarians elect a conservative last night no i don't think so um
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He decided in the middle of the road who, if he sees a left turn, he'll take it.
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One area that I looked at his promises or whatever you want to call them was the blanket upzoning thing.
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He says he's going to change it, not repeal it.
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But if you look inside his literature and everything, he's talking about moving that high density in the single-family neighborhoods to better places for density, which is a good thing, depending on what those places are.
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um the so i'm not i am not totally clear what he's planning for uh blanket up zoning i think
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probably what he would try to do is renegotiate with the feds if that's possible to move all the
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high density to say lrt platforms or something like that and put all those high rises on every
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lrt platform he talked about doing that but he's what he said to me was just he's blanket rezoning
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it's dead it's repealed more or less goes back to the older system and the the idea would be that
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density would be concentrated around stuff like lrt stations yeah but i mean he now in my experience
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interviewing the different candidates they said different things to me then were sometimes in
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their platform and then you know we had to sometimes fact check after i i was a bit
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disappointed when i interviewed sonia sharp and dave and she said i was against the climate emergency
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full stop and i was like you know because you know that was kind of famously the very first thing
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gondek and the old council did when they came in it was just like wow what a what a start guys and
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she said i was against it and i guess i kind of took it at face value and we found out afterwards
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in my interview with with jeremy farkas she actually did vote for the climate emergency
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She then just voted against funding for, you know, the bazillion dollar aircraft carrier style budget appropriated to it.
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And I was like, oh, I guess she kind of played fast and loose there.
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And they all kind of said, they all kind of played, you know, Davison said he's for a hard tax freeze.
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And then, oh, no, Sonia Sharp said she was for a tax freeze.
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And then like a day or two later at the debate, she said we can't have a tax freeze.
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No, Davison came out with a four-year tax freeze.
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okay yeah well so it was sharp who said also in the studio right here where david's sitting
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honestly where you're sitting she said she's for the tax freeze but then two days later the debate
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says we can't have a tax freeze so i was like i don't know they said different things to different
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people um fargus at least found was tend to be more consistent i'm not sure if i liked it as
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much but he tended to be maybe a bit more consistent i would i would agree with that
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like i said earlier i think he was very polished and he he was very narrow in terms of uh
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platforms and stuff like that and continually repeating the same ones over and over and over
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again. So I would agree with that. The one thing to remember, guys, is the mayor is only one vote.
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Yes, exactly. It's not like the prime minister or the premier where it's one vote. There's 14
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other councillors. It's, you know, how is the lay of the land going to be? You know,
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The Hateful Eight, the Gondek gang, they're gone.
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So it's, you know, what kind of gang is going to be supporting Mayor Farkas if he does succeed?
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And, you know, is he going to be able to get enough people on his side to pass his platform?
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Once we have an idea of whether or not we've got a totally independent council or mostly or a left-wing council or a right-wing council, we don't know that yet.
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No. One thing we've glaring omission from discussion of the mayor's race, though. Larry Heather did not place last.
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I know. He is at one thousand two hundred two votes. He is ahead of Jager Gustafsson, who had nine hundred and five.
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So hats off to Harry Leather on his not coming in last this time. Good for you, Larry.
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Does Gondek or Davidson run again in four years?
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If Farkas looks like he's not going to get touched,
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So if Sonia Sharp's successor in Ward 1 does win, we're going to get into that next.
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If that person wins, then Sonia probably cannot likely reclaim that ward because there'll be her successor incumbent there.
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But if a lefty wins it and it's open, yeah, maybe she runs in the ward.
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His best showing, I guess, was last time with third, this time with fourth.
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Ward 1, so that's where Sonia Sharp was the counselor for the last four years.
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Okay, so all of these results, there's 60-odd, you know, roughly 65 polls in each of the wards.
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So on average, they've got 15 to 19 polls reporting, roughly.
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Just know that for every ward we're talking about here, these are highly tentative results.
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Some, there's a big enough lead that we can make a call.
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Ward 1, where Sonia Sharp had been the councillor for four years,
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uh the calgary party candidates with the left-wing party joey nowak yep uh is leading 5,649
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uh and then two candidates medium behind could maybe catch up uh you got the abc candidate
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A conservative, Kathy Jacobs, and independent, Dan Olson.
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So that's Sonia Sharp's chosen successor there, right behind.
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Yeah, Ward 1 is too close to call. Why don't you talk about Ward 2 here?
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Jennifer Wynes is independent, no party affiliation, and leading quite handily right now with John Garden, who is the ABC candidate.
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Yes, she is the incumbent. I think we can probably call her. I don't know that Garden will be able to close that gap.
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What kind of councillor is she? Is she on the left council?
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She's very quiet. She's very, very financial. When she's asking questions-
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Well, no. Okay, she's got blonde hair. When she's questioning administration or council of members,
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nine times out of ten, it's about money and what does this cost and what's the return on that and
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stuff like that so she keeps her her finger on on the calculator quite a bit which is a good thing
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did she vote more with the sharp faction of council more with the gondek uh i would think
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more with gondek but that's not to say she hasn't crossed the line and gone the other way okay uh
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john production so on the side here let's see the comments just in case there's so you guys in the
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comments feel free to talk and talk and whatever but if you want um we can if you have questions
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and whatnot maybe maybe we'll address them not guaranteed if you've got a good question oh derek
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is woke all right i think he meant some wake if you have a coffee i yeah i i i'm already done my
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my cup here yeah you've had enough of that stuff for the day i'm not woken up i've only had two
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espressos here okay uh all right so ward two i'd say ideologically that might be kind of a swing
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vote that goes either way all right ward three uh no incumbent actually running there no andrew
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yule is uh independent tremendously huge huge lead that's that's one we can call yep he's an
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an independent. He's not with any of the parties here. But where does he land? Do you think
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you have any idea where that guy lands ideologically? No, no idea. All right. Well, he is one of
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the guys we can, I think, pretty safely call at this point. He's got a huge lead, more
00:25:16.560
than twice as much as the next candidate. I think he probably would be, for lack of
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a better word, a target for Farkas, the former union, or get him into the Farkas camp.
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All right, Ward 4, I'd say that one's too close.
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You've got Daniel James Kelly, 8.6 thousand, Jeremy Wong, 7.2 thousand.
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Who was it earlier that says, oh, you said this in a meeting,
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because there's two Wongs running for council, different wards.
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Okay, so yeah, only three candidates in that writing, or that board.
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But yeah, the leftist Calgary Party candidate is leading Wong, pretty close-ish behind.
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It's close enough that it could be caught, maybe, maybe.
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There we go. Okay. Ward five, Raj Dhaliwal. He's the incumbent. Yep. He's pretty comfortable,
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I think. I would think he's comfortable. Yep. Yeah. I'd say he's likely to stay there.
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What's he like? He's not listed with a party, but where does he stay on council?
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Dhaliwell voted in favor of blanket zoning, but on other occasions, depending on the issue, he has voted on the right side of the divide.
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We're going to have to get used to spelling it because he's going to win.
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Do you know anything about this guy's politics?
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I didn't have a whole lot of time to get into all these people.
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But in that ward, there was only, that's interesting,
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there was only one party on the ballot in that ward.
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Um, Jeff Watson, actually, that's, that's interesting. He is a former member of parliament
00:28:12.860
from the Windsor area in Ontario. And he moved out here a number of years ago. Um, I think he
00:28:18.920
may have sought a UCP nomination at one point. I'm not positive. I think he sought a UCP nomination,
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uh, unsuccessfully, uh, ran for council, uh, but obviously does not appear to, uh,
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been successful he's running fourth uh okay award seven uh do two wongs make a right
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uh terry wong the incumbent uh is behind mike atkinson by about 1400 but i don't know i mean
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i think it's too close terry could come sternum back with all those postal account
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yeah terry wong is interesting he's so he's so right now yeah we've got um
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Yeah. Mike Atkinson. I don't know where that guy stands, but he's not with a party, but not too far behind. Terry Wong is the incumbent. He's an interesting guy. He came from the Wild Rose. He's been a Wild Rose candidate in previous, I think, at least one, I think two provincial elections. Not successful. He's running in a pretty urban liberal part of the city.
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Yep. But he definitely did not seem to be like a Wild Rose member of the council. Like he was
00:29:31.380
pretty moderate. But he ran as the community's first candidate.
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He's voted both sides of the spectrum depending on the issue. He's very vocal in council,
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talks to administration probably more than any of the other councillors and digging and getting
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information, and a lot of it is financial information. So he does a good job, I think.
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Yeah. So, I mean, he's got a shot, but he's not leading right now. There's 17 out of 72.
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That Ward's got a lot of polls, more than others that we've gone through so far. So he's still
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got a shot of closing it, but he's trailing right now. Ward A, it's another interesting one. Again,
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only one party on the ballot, Cornelia Weeb of Communities First, one of the conservative parties.
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She is running a pretty close-ish second behind independent Nathaniel Schmidt. Do you know
00:30:36.920
anything about Nathaniel Schmidt? No party. No party, but Ward 8 is interesting. I think it's
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one of the most interesting wardens in the city, because last year they returned Courtney Walcott,
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decidedly the most left-wing member of council uh in ward 8 which includes some pretty pricey
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neighborhoods as well as the belt line so it's it's really weird down there uh schmidt uh
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independent i think he's probably a little bit on the left side but he also might be uh
00:31:08.920
a target for farkas to to join into the farkas group if it becomes one
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In there was Gary Bobo. He was a global reporter, I think. He was a global reporter. He became
00:31:30.420
liberal. I think he was chief of staff for the liberal, the very morbid liberal party
00:31:34.600
for some time, which I thought was odd. I like Gary. He's left of me, but he's not an
00:31:41.340
insane liberal, I find. No, I think in this election, he gravitated a bit to the right
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from where he was. If you look at his platform and stuff like that, he couldn't kill
00:31:52.540
upzoning the whole deal. He's gravitated more to the right. Yeah. He's running a respectable
00:31:59.540
third, but does not have a chance of catching up here. You know, if I was going to see kind
00:32:03.380
of a liberal-ish guy elected, I think Gary would have been good. I think he just, he cares about
00:32:36.780
uh harrison clark no party affiliation uh just barely over gargar yes you got that right you
00:32:44.640
can see it up on the screen gargar g-a-r first name g-a-r last name uh squirt uh gargar uh hold
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I'm looking at looking this one up. I recognize that name.
00:33:10.840
He was the Alberta Party candidate, Calgary East riding.
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I knew I had seen his name before because like that, that's a name.
00:33:25.640
Gargar is not ā there's another name at the end there somewhere.
00:33:29.860
On Elections Calgary, he's just listed as G-A-R, G-A-R.
00:33:56.680
He is running a really close second behind Harrison Clark.
00:34:02.740
Then the ABC party is running respectable third.
00:34:19.360
and the two leading candidates are not affiliated with any party.
00:34:25.960
Ward 10, Andre Chabot, very long-time councillor.
00:34:35.820
Did you know he could spend most of the day walking around on his hands?
00:34:40.500
He used to walk around on his hands at City Hall.
00:34:54.520
No, I told you he had a bit of a heart issue and stopped,
00:35:02.500
Well, another one that we can definitely call Ward 11, Rob Ward,
00:35:07.420
who was actually briefly an employee here at the Western Standard.
00:35:18.960
his next closest competitor and he so he and he's so he's communities first he's he's conservative
00:35:25.200
next closest competitor is independent courtney penner that's an incumbent to destroy an incumbent
00:35:31.600
that decisively she destroyed herself um yeah histrionics is her second name middle name um
00:35:41.920
she put on facebook i think it was last week she was crying her eyes out and said i never asked for
00:35:47.360
this i never asked for this i'm thinking do that in your bathroom but i think that hurt her massively
0.89
00:35:52.640
she also was crying uh when council shot down the development of glenmore landing when she came out
00:36:00.000
to the media scrum she's crying and talking about uh she couldn't believe council shot it down i
00:36:06.640
mean the density is ridiculous but she says she said well we've got all of these buses going by
00:36:13.280
the Glenmore Landing. We need people to put it on the buses. That was their whole thing about it.
00:36:20.320
Rob has been a community activist for many years now. He ran in the last election,
00:36:25.840
lost only by 800 votes. He's been around for a while, a member of the Sonia Sharp party,
00:36:34.800
but I think he's one that could probably find a way to work with Farkas.
00:36:39.600
yeah ward 12 uh sarah ferguson no uh prince and this is the closest one yeah this is uh the
00:36:52.020
closest one i think we've got sarah ferguson yeah she's at 4954 votes james mike jameson
00:36:59.840
4958 now that's conservative versus conservative uh so no no no no no she's oh no you're right
00:37:07.960
Yeah. Sarah Ferguson is Calgary party, left party, a better Calgary, which is, by some perceptions, the most conservative party for.
00:37:21.720
Oh, the ABC candidate leading by four votes. Yes.
00:37:25.140
leading four votes behind uh mike so mike jameson abc party leading by four freaking votes uh sarah
00:37:35.440
ferguson behind by four votes and then not too far behind uh i've known this guy a long time i
00:37:41.420
can't pronounce his last name shane uh bick bick yuk bishik bishik bishik i think that's it yeah
00:37:49.540
i should know i i've met the guy a couple times uh i don't know well but uh so he's a conservative
00:38:00.400
still win. I mean, there's a lot to come in that
00:38:02.820
ward. There's a whole lot to come in all the wards.
00:38:23.180
If anything's going to flip, it's going to be that one.
00:38:26.620
But it'd be interesting to see, because this one is the ABC party's best chance of electing a councillor.
00:38:33.760
Right now, at a party affiliate, you've got a lot of independents.
00:38:37.380
But then you've got Communities First, Centre-Right Party, Calgary Party, the Lefty Party.
00:38:43.920
They've elected, or are very likely, have got leading candidates, or are likely to elect people.
00:38:50.260
ABC didn't have incumbents, had no incumbents, right?
00:39:00.740
And if so, then you've got elected people from both parties on council.
00:39:04.740
We'll talk about the party system, how it's going to shake up after.
00:39:07.700
But that complicates things for the conservative side.
00:39:51.400
And ABC could have definitely run a candidate there, but they didn't.
00:40:15.100
He's the man who started the Get Gone Gone deck.
00:40:21.440
And then the city had the audacity to invalidate every single signature he collected.
00:40:39.900
And he is not affiliated with a party, but he is most definitely a conservative.
00:40:53.460
And then the Calgary party, Ryan Stutt or Stute.
00:41:05.860
I think it's, oh, and then there's Aaron Averbuka.
00:41:15.280
I'd say it's going to be unlikely anyone catches up to him.
00:41:18.560
He's likely coming on, and he's not affiliated with the party,
00:41:28.880
but he may end up being the most conservative guy on council.
00:41:35.680
Okay, well, let's talk about the party system here.
00:41:59.340
but it's got people who are definitely not conservative as well
00:42:12.940
Yeah. Then you got ABC, a better Calgary. I had no incumbents, so it's less of an established party, but which is more consistently conservative.
00:42:26.340
By party affiliation, it looks like a majority of the council, including the mayor, is likely to be nonpartisan, but they'll have their own leadings.
00:42:36.540
But ABC is, sorry, Communities First is definitely going to have elected councillors.
00:42:40.520
Calgary Party is definitely going to have elected councillors.
00:42:43.780
ABC looks like it's got a good chance, a reasonable chance of one, but it's separated by four votes.
00:42:51.540
Then you've got Independence on the left and the right.
00:42:54.840
You know, we were just talking about Landon Johnson.
00:42:57.600
Very conservative, not affiliated with the party.
00:43:00.300
I've always thought it's going to take a couple elections for clear party system.
00:43:05.580
to develop. Yeah, I think so. I think it will. Farkas, if Farkas keeps his win here,
00:43:12.760
the mayor not being of a party complicates the development, I think, of this because
00:43:17.120
it's kind of, I don't know, do you think it's in his interest to form a party? He ran as like,
00:43:22.100
I'm going to keep parties out of city hall, stop us, party takeover. If you think about it,
00:43:27.280
and I wrote this about Gondek was the de facto leader of an unofficial party that I'm
00:43:35.560
i'm sure that they sat down in a board room somewhere and said okay this we're all together
00:43:39.800
on these issues let's do that uh practice could do that very easily with with the independents
00:43:45.080
and and the conservatives even maybe some calgary party people i don't know uh i it's it's the door
00:43:51.800
is open for him to do that yeah and he'll have you know his first week in office he'll have sit down
00:43:57.720
private chit chats with all of them yeah and uh you know start laying the groundwork for whatever
00:44:02.600
needs. Do you think it's in his interest, Dave, to stay as nonpartisan as he can? Ideologically,
00:44:11.800
at least now, he's not on the hard left or the hard right of the council. He's probably kind of,
00:44:17.240
again, the council is so up in the air, but he's likely to be, relatively speaking,
00:44:21.320
in the middle ideologically of the council. And municipal issues are not as straightforward
00:44:25.960
ideological as at the provincial and at the federal level. No, he's got a couple years
00:44:30.840
to figure it out he's got four years in power so he wins and you know derek that's the thing that
00:44:36.600
confused everybody in this election was communities calgary better calgary nobody knew what it all
00:44:42.440
stood for all of those parties could disappear right and then we start you know a year into the
00:44:49.480
before the next election we start getting new different parties coming up and to confuse
00:44:54.920
everybody again so i think yeah i think uh jeremy's best play at this point is to stay independent
00:45:01.160
yep yeah uh my my favorite name of a political party in canada was a municipal party in vancouver
00:45:08.280
the non-partisan association party i'm like yes we're the non-party party but it was i think i
00:45:14.920
think it wasn't it was kind of a conservative party they called it so the non-partisan association i
00:45:19.720
I mean, it was kind of, it was pretty goofy names.
00:45:23.280
All these municipal parties have such generic, bland names.
00:45:27.840
I think it was a mistake for the, you know, when the UCP brought in the right of, at least
00:45:32.740
in Calgary and Edmonton, to form political parties.
00:45:34.840
I think they should have allowed them to use the names like conservative and liberal.
00:45:39.000
I think they just didn't want there to be brand confusion in the event that like, okay,
00:45:42.000
there's a conservative nominated for mayor or councillor somewhere, and they say something
00:45:48.700
Yeah, I think it was brand protection. I think that's the reason. But it also then just confused everything.
00:45:53.680
It did. And people are busy. They don't have time to go, OK, is this ABC party left or right or middle or what?
00:46:01.100
And it also comes down to how many people even knew there were parties in the electorate.
00:46:08.120
Don't know. Don't know. I think the bottom line is that if the political parties were a car, they're all on flat tires right now.
00:46:18.700
that's a very nice metaphor i i think the most likely thing to happen is farkas stays
00:46:25.660
likely without a party but i think the two conservative parties likely coalesce into a
00:46:32.140
single party either one just becomes hyper dominant takes over the other one are you
00:46:36.540
talking about conservatives conservatives don't get along with each other yes but they tend also
00:46:41.900
to merge those two parties were fighting from day one right right up until yesterday but it was
00:46:48.540
it was more personal one had the incumbents one didn't um you know so if you if you end up with
00:46:54.700
that one abc candidate winning and then you've got say three maximum four communities first
00:47:02.380
well maybe even more i don't know but let's say there's three to four communities first
00:47:05.980
counselors and then there's one abc and then you've got independent clearly conservative guys
00:47:31.360
as a block, and then eventually, you know, they're going to get
00:47:33.400
to know each other. They're going to go for beers
00:47:42.980
left party, you're going to have a more clear right
00:47:45.020
party, and then you're still going to have independents
00:47:46.820
in the middle, and maybe even on the flanks too.
00:47:53.200
conservative parties by the next municipal election.
00:47:55.300
I tend to agree with that, yeah, because they're going to
00:48:03.080
look, we're all voting for the same thing, the same way.
00:48:09.000
Maybe we can get Jason Kennedy to sort of mediate between them.
00:48:18.700
I guess I think it's going to be a natural way of doing it here.
00:48:22.800
And it's a less adversarial system than in a legislature.
00:48:25.860
Derek, there's nothing natural about Calgary City Council.
00:48:38.840
You're both really long-time City Hall watchers.
00:48:43.640
You were City Hall editor for the Calgary Sun before coming to the Standard as our news editor.
00:48:54.900
Council's still such a mess, but we can, on the aggregate, predict.
00:49:00.980
How much better off are we, do you think, with this mayor and council?
00:49:08.000
Gondek was, you know, there's a reason she was the worst polling mayor in Calgary history.
0.97
00:49:16.460
You know, it could take Farkas four years to undo the damage that she's done.
0.76
00:49:24.200
So, yeah, you know, we can argue about whether Farkas leans a little bit to the left or leans a little bit to the right.
00:49:30.620
Bottom line is he's not Jody Gondek, and it cannot get any worse from here on out.
00:49:36.360
Before I go to you, Mike, just the commenters. God, I hate Jason Kenney. That Kenney joke wasn't funny at all.
00:49:54.320
Okay. So, yeah, Mike, same question to you. Again, a council we really don't know.
00:49:59.320
mayor we probably know but you know cats we have an idea uh on aggregate based on what we know
00:50:06.400
how much better off are we well i think we're much better off but go back to uh 2021 when
00:50:13.780
all those new faces were put on council it's basically the same thing i think gondek sat
00:50:19.460
down with them early and said here's uh i understand your politics the same as mine
00:50:23.580
here's what we're going to do and they they just did it she she got away with all that stuff because
1.00
00:50:28.000
she knew she was going to have the support on council.
00:50:43.120
He's got to, I think, sit down with all of them one-on-one
00:50:46.180
and say, these are the important things that this city needs.
00:51:01.520
I think he should have an easy time doing that.
00:51:03.260
I mean, he's a nice, he's an easy-to-get-along-with guy.
00:51:08.540
He's less stridently ideological than he was four years ago.
00:51:15.060
And I think also just his rhetoric is not like, you know, he was the leader of the opposition against Nenshi.
00:51:25.320
He is the reason Nenshi did not stand for re-election.
00:51:32.220
No incumbent elected mayor in Calgary has lost since 1980 when Ralph Klein took down Ross Elger.
00:51:54.460
Um, so yeah, I'm, um, but yeah, 1980, 45 years ago, the last time a mayor who has been elected
00:52:05.040
has been defeated in a Calgary election, a real incumbent, uh, the last time an incumbent mayor
00:52:10.660
went down to third place. Um, I'm going to look that up. I will go in here. Uh,
00:52:15.820
so did you watch the game last night i did okay well just trying to fill the air well yeah oh
00:52:29.980
okay you want to talk about baseball now what do you think the chances are beating the dodgers
00:52:34.220
Slim to none. Slim just left town. Oh my God. In the history of Calgary, no incumbent mayor has
00:52:50.780
ever finished third or lower. This is the worst result for an incumbent Calgary mayor. It's only
00:52:57.660
giving me back to 1951 they didn't have google up before that yeah we would have the results
00:53:06.380
they should be there i think we've got okay here we go western standard award the gondek award for
00:53:11.100
worst oh my god re-elected re-elect calgary mayors always get it's just the same guys over and over
00:53:18.940
they always get re-elected yeah a lot to be said about name recognition on the ballot okay oh yeah
00:53:24.780
Jody Gondek, tentatively here, I'm going to have to do a little more here, but this could be wrong,
00:53:30.460
but it appears she has the biggest defeat in the history of Calgary mayor's races going back to 1894,
00:53:47.660
I was still in diapers, but I was still reporting.
00:53:54.560
she was historically low in the polls so she's finished historically low in an election so calgary
00:54:00.960
mayors incumbent mayors uh they tend to stay popular for whatever whatever reason and then
00:54:06.080
when they cease being popular they cease being a candidate for re-election that's that's the key
00:54:11.440
that's the secret sauce they retire you know rock klein okay he goes on to bigger better things
00:54:16.320
but if you get unpopular you just don't run again like that's the secret sauce that's the biggest
00:54:49.980
didn't see the writing on the wall and like there was decent there was other people who could could
00:54:54.980
have run carried the left banner mildly competently maybe someone else bigger would have stepped up
00:54:59.900
without her because she her staying in the race meant it was harder for the left to wait because
0.65
00:55:04.000
the left has traditionally been pretty united in calgary mayoral elections absolutely they were
00:55:08.480
not united here uh her staying in the race meant that it didn't make sense for another big name
0.99
00:55:13.720
lefty to really get into the race uh she stayed in and it's now cost them the mayor's chair
1.00
00:55:21.300
She did not see the writing on the wall or didn't believe it.
00:55:27.240
Well, she was thinking that the right vote was going to split and she could sneak up the middle again.
00:55:33.160
The right vote did split, but her vote was so damn small it didn't count.
0.70
00:55:38.580
So I guess, you know, there's just a few good news stories here.
00:55:47.780
historically like this is the biggest defeat for an incumbent mayor in the history of the city
00:56:01.460
okay um any other uh big takeaways you want to leave people with before we wrap it uh just one
00:56:08.180
um i know sonia if she was going to be the mayor was going to take on administration and having
1.00
00:56:16.580
watched my share of council meetings this year um something needs to be done inside administration
00:56:24.180
to make them understand they're not the boss um they they do things i mean a lot of this woke
00:56:31.860
dei stuff was endorsed by administration the dan mcclain tells me stories of of some of the internal
00:56:39.300
learning systems and sessions they have to go through but administration needs to be put in
00:56:43.940
this place and and if farkas or can can put that together and put the onus on council to make the
00:56:51.220
big decisions rather than them just approving administration's decisions because essentially
00:56:57.860
that's all they do uh but the council needs to to take more control of city hall dave any uh
00:57:07.940
well first thing i'd like to see uh mayor farkas is uh change the name of fort calgary back to fort
00:57:13.060
i asked him about that on the interview he said uh he spoke to some you know indigenous groups
00:57:20.820
they said they take it as a declaration of war uh i don't know i mean it's fort calgary it's
00:57:28.020
it's the nucleus of this great city um i mean that would be a really i like who the hell no
00:57:35.300
one was calling for that no one was like i don't know anyone who was saying yes fort calgary's
00:58:01.640
some pride in this city, because this city's been
00:58:11.400
restoring some civic pride i think that's a good easy way and it doesn't cost the taxpayer a penny
00:58:17.680
nope you can put the old signs back up reuse them okay well uh we're not going to abuse everyone's
00:58:24.980
time uh some of you have jobs uh so uh so do we yeah we yeah we got we got to get back to work
00:58:32.180
and get back to our normal parts of our jobs got to fix the election i mean um all right well stay
00:58:37.880
tuned uh the council race is still a dog's breakfast by the way i don't know if we mentioned
00:58:42.920
this but just so people know they're saying elections calgary is saying council numbers
00:58:48.520
probably won't be known until eight o'clock tonight well that'll be the closest races
00:58:54.200
there'll be others that we can continue to call throughout the day there's some we've already
00:58:57.560
called uh so you know let's stay on top of that we'll do individual stories for each of the wards
00:59:02.760
as we call them i think that's a good idea here because they're not getting called all at once
00:59:06.520
and we'll continue to post news stories as we are able to reasonably make the calls.
00:59:16.420
Some of them are going to be so damn close, we're going to have to wait for the end
00:59:22.540
So, you know, the latest unofficial results, 8 o'clock tonight.
00:59:26.440
But there'll be ones we can call throughout the day.
00:59:32.060
You guys get back to work, earn some money, pay your taxes.
00:59:36.520
if you feel like it. Thank you very much for joining us today. God bless.