Posts Tagged ‘Barb Higgins’

All eyes on Naheed Nenshi

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October 18, 2010 - By

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010 will be Calgary’s 36th mayor’s day, and his/her time to shine and to celebrate his/her victory. However, October 18th, which is election day, will truly be Naheed Nenshi’s day, win or lose. Nenshi has come a long way from being a low polling candidate overshadowed by Ric McIver and Barb Higgins, to a surging 3rd candidate who can now claim one and a half newspaper endorsements (one from the Calgary Sun and an honorable mention from the Calgary Herald) and polling in the 20s at least. Nenshi’s background and history is one of great interest, and far more detailed and known than his challengers Higgins and McIver.

Biography

Nenshi was born in Toronto and grew up in Marlborough in Calgary, and the beginnings of his political interest began right at Queen Elizabeth Jr/Sr High school, where he was the Prime Minister of school’s 10th mock parliament. Interesting enough, then MLA Bob Hawkesworth was invited as Speaker of the House. Nenshi went on to become president of the University of Calgary’s Students’ Union, and his current campaign manager Chima Nkemdirim, served as Vice President External.

Nenshi would finish his university education with a Bachelors of Commerce [...]Read More

Tags: ι ι Categories: Mayor of Calgary

yyc Twibates Part I: Intro and Mayoral

October 17, 2010 - By

In a world of 140 characters or less, “twitter debate” is simply 7 characters too wasteful. With tweeps and twitpics and twurls, it seemed only appropriate that our experiment be called a “twibate.” When we set out to do this, we had no idea if it was going to work well or not. We had no idea whether 10 minutes between questions would be far too long. We weren’t even sure what audience would be like. Yet, as we progressed with the experiment, we learned that there are actually some good ways to do this.

Is Twitter the be all and end all of debates? No. It has severe limitations. However, it actually did help some individuals make decisions, and it helped some candidates get messages out. It is a complimentary system, to the already established media for campaign messaging and political discourse.

The most difficult piece for myself, personally, has been getting the time to dissect the data. Twitter’s back-end functionality actually links tweets together *if* someone clicks the “reply” button as opposed to starting their tweet with “@[username]” without hitting the button. So side conversations can be completely unreliable without going through line-by-line and determining what conversation a [...]Read More

Tags: ι ι Categories: Events, Mayor of Calgary

The ‘Real’ Disappointments

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October 16, 2010 - By

Nation, one of the things I’m most excited about to come out of this election on the Social Media side of things is the birth of a new blog, by (until now) guest blogger Christina Rontynen and her “plus one”.  Being the megalithic blogging presence that I am, I take full credit for the creation of this blog, as well as Calgary Rants and (by extension) Calgary Daddy, not to mention CalgaryPolitics.com.  Add to this the fact that I single-handedly wiped Alberta Tory off the map, and scared Calgary Grit so badly he had to move to Toronto, and it becomes clear that the greatest force shaping the landscape of the Albertan blogosphere isn’t rain or wind – it’s The Enlightened Savage.

This is the final entry of a series that began with an open invitation by Christina for candidates to show her “the real them”.

Christina’s post begins…  now.

*****

I started this blogging adventure with an invitation to all mayoral candidates to hang out and let me get know the person behind the politician. I received an overwhelming response – McKenzie, Nenshi, Burrows, and Higgins. So thanks – to those of [...]Read More

Tags: ι ι ι ι ι ι ι ι ι ι ι ι ι ι ι Categories: Mayor of Calgary

Do we have to prove that we can break Barb Higgins?

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October 15, 2010 - By

As a former mayoral candidate in some election in some city, Thursday was a very interesting day for me to watch, and a very long day for mayoral candidate Barb Higgins. What was supposed to be a simple one one one with Mike McCourt turned into Higgins’ worst nightmare. I have a couple of comments to make because while we are all so excited about this election, it has turned ugly and nasty, and quite frankly at times, a gong show.

When I ran, I ran to address issues and get people talking about the civic election. I was glad to see that the turnout go from a terrible 19% to 33%. I may have pointed things out and debated about issues that were important for a city that was still booming in 2007, but I did not throw mud around at people or attacked the candidates personally. I ran a campaign about spending hours talking to student journalists, steering away from personal attacks, and did my best to represent my age group of 18-25. I wanted to have a civil conversation, and the public responded well to that kind of dialogue. What we have seen from Bob Hawkesworth’s [...]Read More

Tags: Categories: Mayor of Calgary

‘Real’ Encouragement from a ‘Real’ Passionate Calgarian: Drinks with Barb Higgins

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October 13, 2010 - By

Nation: The following is a submission from FOES (Friend Of the Enlightened Savage) Christina Rontynen.  It is also posted at her shiny, new blog: PC in YYC

Christina’s text appears…  now.

*****

I had been attempting to sit down with Barb since the week after my original blog had been published. A member of her team contacted me and let me know that this “interview” was important to them. Throughout the course of the last month I received emails and the occasional phone call asking my availability for the week ahead. On Friday night I was asked if I could be flexible over the long weekend. As a citizen blogger my answer was, of course, YES – except for the thanksgiving dinner factor on Sunday night. That was unlucky for me because I was invited to experience the Flames home opener with Barb that night. I really chalked it up to bad luck and bad timing. The next morning, to my surprise, one of Barb’s volunteers called and asked if I could meet for drinks at 8pm.

My day continued like any other – and when 7pm rolled around @ppilarski and I got ready and headed out to meet [...]Read More

Tags: Categories: Mayor of Calgary

The most common argument I’ve heard against Barb Higgins

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October 10, 2010 - By

Lately I’ve heard one main criticism about Barb Higgins and it’s just the wrong way to go about criticizing her: “She doesn’t do anything, she just reads a teleprompter.”


As a student journalist this irritates me. So much work goes into creating a simple half hour news show – especially one on prime time television. You can’t just throw it together. Trust me, I know what happens when you just throw together a half-hour news show – and it’s definitely not CTV News.

Higgins was more than just a news anchor, she wrote and co-produced the 6:00 News as well. So that stuff she was “just reading” on the teleprompter? She  wrote a lot of that too. I also imagine  she helped choose the stories to report and air as well.  She didn’t just show up at 6:00, read some stuff on TV, then leave at 6:30, but it sounds like a lot of people think she did just that.

Being in the media means it is your job to know what is going on. Not only are you reporting and reading the news every day, you’re friends with other people who are doing the same thing. [...]Read More

Tags: Categories: Mayor of Calgary

A Call for a Final Debate

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October 6, 2010 - By

As much as I hate to admit it, it looks like the race to be Calgary’s next mayor has slowly narrowed itself down to three candidates who have a shot at the big chair.

Barb Higgins and Ric McIver are polling almost neck and neck, while Naheed Nenshi is the only other candidate in double digits of support.

I’m not ready to call the race yet or anything like that, but I do think it is time for citizens to be given a chance to see these three head-to-head-to-head in a debate allowing them the opportunity to clearly layout their plan and priorities for all Calgarians to directly compare free of any hindrance.

All three candidates have espoused their belief that what Calgary City Council needs is more transparency and accountability. There is no time like the present to show their belief in these principles and how important they are to them.

CalgaryPolitics.com has created a Facebook event page where all Calgarians can lend their support to this call for a Final Debate of the leading candidates in the week before the election. Please follow this link and mark yourself as “attending” if you too believe this debate [...]Read More

Tags: ι ι Categories: Calgary Issues, Events, Mayor of Calgary, Public Service Announcements

Gut Check Time

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October 6, 2010 - By

Nation, by now many of you have seen the new polling numbers for the Calgary Mayoral Election.

To sum it up:
McIver 31%
Higgins 28%
Nenshi 16%
All others, combined 9%
Undecided 17%

Let’s take a look at what this poll means for our candidates, shall we?

Ric McIver – 31%

This is a worrisome poll for Ric.  He’s had a more or less prohibitive lead since the day he announced his intention to run for Mayor.  This is the first time someone’s been perceived as being within legitimate striking distance of him – and what’s worse, he finds himself in a statistical tie with Barb Higgins, a photogenic communicator with no voting record hanging around her neck like an albatross.  Most of the barbs (lower-case b) in this campaign have been tossed at McIver, as the front-runner.  Higgins has, to this point, remained relatively unscathed.  Further, Ric has seen his share of popular support drop from 43% (September 19th) all the way down to 31% (October 5th).

Is he still winning? Yes.  If an election were held today, would he be our Mayor tomorrow? Yes. But suddenly, a campaign that has [...]Read More

Tags: ι ι ι ι ι ι Categories: Mayor of Calgary

My Thoughts On The VoteCalgary.ca Mayoralty Forum

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September 28, 2010 - By

I was fortunate enough to be invited to attend the VoteCalgary.ca Mayoralty Forum held today at Stampede Park, along with fellow CalgaryPolitics.com blogger DJ Kelly.  The forum was attended by a packed house made up of representatives from Calgary’s building and development industry and it was a well run affair.

 The eight mayoralty candidates in attendance were:  Ric McIver, Joe Connelly, Jon Lord, Barb Higgins, Craig Burrows, Naheed Nenshi, Wayne Stewart and Bob Hawkesworth.  Perennial candidate ( and party crasher) Oscar Fech was also in attendance and while he tried to squeeze in on the forum, he was not part of the proceedings. ( Moderator Ken King explained that these eight candidates were invited as they completed a pre-forum questionnaire.)

 While the forum was well run and went by rather quickly, there really was no “earth shattering” quotes.  Most of the candidates stuck to their positions and the central theme centered around such buzzwords as “getting it right”, “creating a level playing field”, “streamlining the approval process” and “supporting consumers choice in having the options to purchase a single family, detached dwelling”.  There seemed to be a lot of generic answers given and all candidates tended to stay [...]Read More

Tags: ι ι ι ι ι ι Categories: Mayor of Calgary

tales of a blog

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September 24, 2010 - By

I was reminded today that people actually read Calgary Politics. Naheed Nenshi called ahead of time to say he was running late for his Gauntlet interview and specified that he read my post and regretted following Higgins’ example. Higgins’ team called back today (two days after…hmm) to apologize for being late, giving us such a short window of time, and wanted to reschedule another interview. She also fired her campaign manager today for communication and scheduling problems, which I assume is related to some degree.

For the record, we’re only doing one interview per candidate.

Yesterday as I wrote about our interview with Bob Hawkesworth I thought to myself, “We haven’t finished doing all of our interviews yet, so it’s probably not the best if I post my thoughts about the interviews before we finish them all.” Duh. They say hindsight is the clearest. I will still post my thoughts about the interviews, but after we’re finished them.

It’s freaky to think that mayoral and aldermanic candidates read what I write and even refer to what I write. Yeesh, that’s not a lot of pressure at all…

[...]Read More

Tags: ι ι Categories: Mayor of Calgary

My impressions from Barb Higgins’ interview with the Gauntlet

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September 22, 2010 - By

We’ve started doing our mayoral interviews for the Gauntlet, the University of Calgary’s independent student newspaper. Each municipal election we put out a supplement in our newspaper, so look for that in October. Here I’ll post a bit of a behind the scenes look at each of our interviews and my completely subjective impressions. Our first interviewee was Barb Higgins.

My first impression is – why is she so hard to get a hold of? She hasn’t responded to CJSW’s request for an interview that we sent a month ago, and Kim had to pull several strings to finally get her to come to the Gauntlet.

Then she was 20 minutes late. I know it’s hard to get around Mac Hall right now, so I could understand maybe a bit of lateness…but 20 minutes is a bit much.

Anyways, the interview was fairly short – we only had ten minutes with her. She almost seemed nervous at first, she was sitting on the edge of her seat leaning forward. Was she trying to seem more personable or eager? I don’t know. I guess I’m so used to her sitting up straight as a news anchor that her body language [...]Read More

Tags: Categories: Mayor of Calgary

Kassam withdraws from Mayoral Race

September 17, 2010 - By

Alnoor Kassam announced today that he is withdrawing from the race to be Calgary’s next Mayor, and indicated he will be putting his support (as it were) behind candidate Barb Higgins.

One has to wonder exactly how much support Kassam has, and whether that will translate into a boon for Higgins or not.  In the absence of any recent and reputable polling, this is all guess-work.  The prevailing wisdom has been that Higgins has been losing momentum and support as the “freshness” of having a local celebrity in the race has given way to the parry-and-thrust of partisan hackery and the nuts-and-bolts policy discussions that, in all fairness, are probably also not as important as this author wishes that they were.

Is this a game changer?  Far too soon to say.  I admit to being somewhat surprised that Alnoor pledged his support to a political neophyte over someone like Ric McIver, who is running on a platform that looks similar to Kassam’s from 2007.  That said, though, Alnoor is a relatively successful businessman, and if in his estimation the smart investment is in Higgins, it makes you wonder what he knows that the rest of us don’t…

… yet.

[...]Read More

Tags: ι ι Categories: Mayor of Calgary

No free lunch for any mayoral candidate

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September 9, 2010 - By

Update: Forgot to add a comment on Derek McKenzie. It has now been included.

This post was originally going to be called “Blurtations about the 2 horse race” but it was decided that this was a better title. While this blogger didn’t get the opportunity to eat lunch or have coffee with Higgins, he did have a “pseudo lunch” with her when she made her platform speech down at the Olympic Plaza. There are many points to be made from this event and from the election in general that a post to talk about it all was fitting.

1. A platform from Higgins, or at least something to hold onto: Expectations are pretty low so far when it comes to platform ideas. In the perceived two way race between Ric McIver and Barb Higgins, you’re probably not expecting a lot in terms of platforms and policies. However, while many have criticized Higgins for a lack of a platform, she came out with at least a few (and very practical). She laid out 7 main goals, and gave the public at least a hint of a platform.

a) Financial Responsibility: One that was interesting to hear was the make [...]Read More

Tags: ι ι ι ι ι ι ι ι ι ι ι ι ι ι ι ι Categories: Mayor of Calgary

Guest Blog: It’s Saturday Night… Do you know where your Mayoral Candidates Are?

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September 1, 2010 - By

Nation, this blogger is blessed to have many articulate readers and friends who visit this blog, some of whom occasionally agree with him, and, as is more often the case, many of whom DISagree with him (because they’re intelligent, and he’s just eye candy).

Occasionally, one of those readers or friends (in this case, both) submits something in writing that deserves a great deal more attention than the typical “comment” at the bottom of another blog post. Christina Rontynen submitted the following commentary to me last Saturday evening, and I’m putting it up on the blog (with her permission) for public consumption. All references to time (e.g. “tonight” or “this evening”) are – as Einstein might say – relative.

Christina’s writing begins… now.

*********

I sit up on a Saturday evening … and like the nerdy, politically astute female I am I wonder what my mayoral candidates are up to. Saturday night is the stereotypical date night; the night away, the night off, the night checked out from the world of politics.

Looking through my TweetDeck I find that the hashtag #nomnomnom brings me to find individuals enjoying funnel cake, chocolate chip cookie dough, and @eliz_rocks enjoying “deep fried cheese [...]Read More

Tags: ι ι ι ι ι ι Categories: Mayor of Calgary

Guest Blogger John Santos on the Global Poll

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July 31, 2010 - By

Nation, it’s funny how small a world this is when you think about it…

I received a Facebook “friend request” a few months ago, from a young man named John Santos. It turns out that his brother had attended a music school at which I had been a teacher. The message that John sent along with his “friend request” indicated that he had long been a reader of The Enlightened Savage, and now that he realized there was a personal connection, he’d be sure to read even more often.

Well, it turns out that John is quite the political animal, and when the Global/NRG poll came out this Thursday night, John made sure to point out on Twitter that, “Not that the overall picture would change, but there are methodological issues with the Global poll.”

Now, many would disagree with me on this point, but I firmly believe that methodology MATTERS in these things… a badly-constructed poll, whether by circumstance or by purposeful design, leads one to believe that certain things are true, when in fact they’re not – and donors, volunteers, and supporters pay attention to the numbers that these polls trumpet as STONE. COLD. FACT. A poll that’s [...]Read More

Tags: ι ι ι ι ι Categories: Mayor of Calgary, Political Theory

Don’t Fire Until You See The Whites Of Their Eyes…

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July 29, 2010 - By

Nation, the silly season is upon us in full force, as we have (at last count) 12 candidates for mayor, 44 confirmed aldermanic candidates, and 11 candidates for trustee spread out over 2 school boards – all vying for public attention, donor dollars, media coverage, and the all-important momentum, going into the October 18th vote.

The crazy train arrived a little earlier than normal this election cycle, with word earlier this year that mayor Dave Bronconnier would not be seeking re-election. From the day that announcement was made, it was only a matter of time before all heck broke loose – and break loose, it did.

3 sitting aldermen are seeking the mayor’s chair: Ric McIver, Bob Hawkesworth and Joe Connelly. As well, Alderman Joe Ceci has announced he won’t be seeking re-election. So, right there, you have 4 wards that will seat new alderman at the first council meeting this fall. That’s assuming no incumbents taste defeat – an unlikely situation, as the acrimonious and controversial nature of this past council hasn’t been seen in these parts since Danielle Smith was a CBE Trustee. People are hungry for change – and it’s not overstating the matter to suggest [...]Read More

Tags: ι ι ι ι ι ι ι Categories: Mayor of Calgary, Political Theory

calgarypolitics.com is taking over the airwaves!

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July 29, 2010 - By

Nation, it has been a big week for The Best Political Team in the Blogosphere (TM), with interviews galore over the past week.

DJ Kelly has been all over the radio waves (July 22nd – 6 pm – and July 28th, 3 pm), Shane Byciuk from calgaryrants.com was interviewed last Friday on Global TV Calgary and on radio (CHQR AM770 at 9 pm on July 28, also available at the audio vault, as well as a 5 pm interview on the 22nd), Jeremy Zhao from politicalgary has done radio and was admitted as media to the Barb Higgins press availability yesterday morning, and your humble scribe has been on the radio twice – once on CJSW and again this morning on CBC Radio One (with Jeremy).

The CJSW interview, and the CBC interview, with Jeremy, are embedded on my blog, here.

It’s clear that the more interesting this election season gets, the more you’re going to be hearing from the folks at calgarypolitics.com. Now would be a good time to bookmark the site, and add us on twitter.

Radio and television programming directors – the bidding for the entire calgarypolitics.com team to spend the evening of October [...]Read More

Tags: Categories: Public Service Announcements

Barb Higgins Announces Run For Mayor

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July 29, 2010 - By

Barb Higgins will be the number one person to watch as the 2010 municipal election creeps up on us. No other candidate, not even Ric McIver, has created such buzz and excitement about their mayoral candidacy. 2010 will be a very big mayoral race in the recent history of open-seat mayoral races. 1980 saw Ralph Klein unexpectedly elected after defeating incumbent Mayor Algers. From the recollection of this blogger, there were not that many high profile candidates in that one. 1989 would be a more lacklustre mayoral race when Al Duerr. 2001 was one where it was both a nasty and a surprising win for Dave Bronconnier after Bev Longstaff was deemed the front runner.

2010 was supposed to be a year of Bronconnier versus McIver in a showdown reminiscent of Sue Higgins versus Ralph Klein back in 1983. Many people forget that, and Sue Higgins recaptured her own Ward 12 seat 3 years after her failed bid in that respect. But, it turned out that Bronconnier decided to rule out a 4th term. All eyes were on Ric McIver, and now many say that Barb Higgins will be the [...]Read More

Tags: ι ι ι ι ι ι ι Categories: Mayor of Calgary

“Never erase the past”

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July 28, 2010 - By

The very first issue of 2600 magazine I ever saw had the following quote displayed on an illustration of a computer monitor on the cover:

Never erase the past

Today, local newscaster Barb Higgins entered the race for Mayor in Calgary. Unfortunately, she or her campaign team have chosen to hide her old Twitter feed.

Now, admittedly, there was nothing particularly interesting in the feed (not very many tweets on there — I had read through it a few days earlier when rumours of her candidacy started cropping up again). I doubt there was any “sinister intent” in this action. They may very well have just been trying to prevent people from confusing her old Twitter account with the new one for the campaign.

But, for me, that’s not the issue. The issue is transparency and accountability of those in, or vying for, public office.

Rather than leaving up an inconsequential record of some things she had previously said publicly, she has chosen to try to wipe the slate clean. If this is how she treats the record of the past on things that wouldn’t have any negative impact for her, what could we then expect of her [...]Read More

Tags: Categories: Mayor of Calgary, Political Theory