It’s been a good week for Naheed Nenshi

10
September 25, 2010 - By

No, let’s rephrase that. It’s been a really good week for Naheed Nenshi.

To recap: Nenshi put out a press release on Thursday containing two questions he says he would have asked the Police Chief Rick Hanson if he was on council. Question one: “Why has Calgary got the second highest per officer cost in the country?” Question two: “Why has the CPS budget increased by 23% but the number of officers on the street has increased by only 11% over the past three years?”

When I first saw Hanson’s response — a media statement accusing Nenshi of spreading inaccurate information and being “ill-informed” and “irresponsible” — I thought: This is good news for Nenshi, regardless of how this tussle plays out. The fact that the police chief felt compelled to go after Nenshi signals very clearly that the latter is a serious contender for council’s top job. Otherwise, why bother correcting him? I mean, fringe mayoral candidate Oscar Fech reportedly said at a forum this week that the mayor’s office threatened to assassinate him, and we didn’t see a news release from the mayor’s office afterwards. Because why bother?

Hanson’s statement also meant Nenshi would be getting his name plastered all over the papers and TV. And when you’re the third-place guy (according to the most recent poll) who’s taking on two well known candidates, having the words “NENSHI KNOCKED” appear on newspaper boxes all over town and having passersby ask “Who’s Nenshi?” is no bad thing.

That Hanson refused to provide numbers to counter Nenshi’s numbers helped the candidate more (if Nenshi’s numbers are wrong, why not provide the right ones?). That Hanson wouldn’t comment further or take media questions on the matter helped Nenshi still more, given Hanson’s aforementioned refusal to provide alternate stats. And the fact that a top civil servant said he wouldn’t be “drawn into a political debate amongst candidates during this election” while simultaneously planting himself in the middle of a political debate amongst candidates during the election — well, you get the idea. I doubt Team Nenshi could have planned it any better.

Which brings us to the story in this morning’s Herald. Rival candidates Ric McIver and Barb Higgins are strongly siding with the police chief (Craig Burrows and Wayne Stewart have already done the same). Says McIver: “He can’t stand by and let somebody falsely malign his department.”

Says Higgins: “I think the chief wants the accurate story out there and I think that’s a great thing.”

All of which would be fine — if Hanson was making any effort to put the accurate numbers out there and prove Nenshi wrong. But he hasn’t. So McIver and Higgins come off looking like they’re blatantly pandering to the law-and-order crowd, and at the same time, they’re helping further the “McBarb” narrative that Team Nenshi is pushing (gist: that McIver and Higgins are more or less the same).

And Nenshi? He comes off looking like the upstart candidate who happened to ask a good (albeit provocative) question and got in trouble for it. Not a bad place to be, and Nenshi knows it. Here’s one of his quotes from this morning’s Herald story: “I’m trying to get the facts on the table, and if the chief helped me get on the front page of the newspaper with my questions that still haven’t been answered, I’m not going to complain about that.”

Like I say: Nenshi’s people couldn’t have scripted this any better if they tried.

Cross-posted at my FFWD blog, Klaszus Corner.

Categories: Mayor of Calgary

  • Nenshi Purple vs Police Blue

    McBarb — that’s the staid, unquestioning combo of McIver and Higgins — have a lot in common: they don’t know how to ask the right (difficult) questions on finance or much of anything else. Nenshi does. The other two simply shake their heads up and down in agreement when Hanson bullies them, or Council, with threats of cutting officers on the beat to distract them from the issue of efficiency efforts in his large department.
    Do Calgarians want a nodding head at the helm of their city or do they want a probing politician who actually does the job required? Asking tough questions is a critical requirement for a new mayor who needs to clean up the mess down at City Hall.
    Go Nenshi, go!
    BTW Calgarians are still waiting for Hanson’s “accurate” figures. :-)

  • DvB

    I agree with your analysis of the situation, but I don’t think it’s going to do Nenshi any good. Voters’ political opinions, as far as I can tell, aren’t formed by rational discussions about whether or not Hanson has rebutted Nenshi satisfactorily. Rather, political debate gets boiled down to simple things like ‘Nenshi wants to cut the police force! That’s bad!’ I’m sad to say I think most voters are making up their minds based on reading newspaper headlines, not studying the issues.

  • Pingback: Examining Calgary’s “three horse race” for mayor at andrewmcintyre.ca

  • http://www.jeremyklaszus.com Jeremy Klaszus

    I agree that a lot of people aren’t going to bother looking at the substance of the Nenshi/Hanson feud — and that’s why McIver and Higgins are doing the “Question the police? How dare he!” bit. But even if some people are talking about Nenshi as the guy who wants to cut the police force (which is ridiculous), at least they’re talking about him. Nenshi has a lot of time to clarify what he’s about. When you’re polling at eight per cent, you take what you can get I think.

    Also, keep in mind that much of the media coverage of the feud contains quotes by poly-sci types who say Hanson was way out of line for going after Nenshi. That doesn’t hurt Nenshi either…

  • Nenshi Purple vs Police Blue

    Perhaps…but there are a goodly number of people in Cowtown with more than an ounce of brains between their ears and they are absolutely fed up with the idiots we currently have on council — and that includes McIver. Stumblebums doesn’t come close to labelling their shenanigans/insufficient thought processes over the years. Some folks refer to the well-educated Nenshi as “the Professor” and, indeed, he does have some impressive credentials as an academic. But what they overlook is his extensive experience in the Big Business world. At this point in time, we need someone like him to start asking the hard questions — and his beef, remember, was not with Hanson but with the dimwits on council — and to get into City Hall and sort the accumulated clutter and mess out. McIver and Higgins would be more of the same with developers and other special interest groups pulling the puppet strings — hence Higgins refusal to name her campaign donors and McIver slyly withholding many of his donors names until after the election is over. Calgarians — at least the educated ones — are sick and tired of this nonsense. Throw the (stumble)bums out and get some fresh, transparent blood in there.

  • CalgaryVoter

    Well… I’ll honestly admit I was one of those “confirmed” voters stuck on Stewart. But this whole Nenshi vs. Police Budget has me looking closer at Naheed. I think Hansen should have kept his mouth shut and not butt in to a civic election. (Frankly, I don’t like his stance on the “Gun Registration” issue in opposition to every other Police Chief in Canada; but that’s another discussion for a different bottle of wine.)

    The boy has “brass”…. I like that. I want someone strong enough to stand up to the bureaucrats and ask the difficult questions. I applaud his stance. About time someone asked the Police Department where all the money is going! They have as much right to an audit as any of our civic departments.

    Good on you, Nenshi! You’re capturing my attention.

  • Funkyfest

    I wasn’t sure about Nenshi, but since Kent Hehr dropped out of the race, and Bob Hawkesworth is a total has been, I am looking more closely into Nenshi. I am seeing the momentum and I really would prefer if Higgins and McIvor were not mayor of Calgary.

  • crik7

    Always ask questions and always grow. the budgeting issue with CPS is a little overwhelming. I mean we do pay our tax dollars and the city is safe to some extent but you have to wonder about where the dollars are going when you see the news where the police or paramedics don’t simply show up and you have an angry citizen. or when you turn on the news and see at least two drunk driving cases on the road. for the 10 years i lived in Calgary i have yet to run into a check stop. so with so much money being pumped in where are the officers? I vote “ask questions, find answers”

  • Calgarian

    Naheed Nenshi is quite frankly an ideological whore. Look at the company he keeps. Stephen Carter is an untrustworthy individual. He claims to be a fiscal Conservative but is so far removed from it being a liberal party backroom toady, he has no experience managing anything. His only defining quality is that he is a Muslim and that’s why Progressives like to vote for him so much.

  • http://www.facebook.com/yyc.jason Jason Gill

    It’s an even better week now!