Reject the municipal political parties and send them packing

If I was running in the municipal election as a candidate in a party, here’s what I’d say in my defence:

“I joined a party because I believed this was the new reality we would be living in after it was imposed on us by the provincial government. This gives me the best shot at winning a council seat to do work that I’m passionate about. At the same time, I am with a group of candidates who all believe in the same vision for Calgary. I’m glad there are still a large number of people running independently. At the end of the day, I will work hard to earn the respect and support of voters and I believe I will be elected based on my personal character, not because of the party I belong to.”

I thought about this because there were a couple of articles in the past month (CBC, Livewire) that interviewed several candidates about the addition of political parties in this year’s municipal elections in Calgary and Edmonton. It was so interesting to see the candidates who are running with a party dance around trying to defend the decision. 

They’re in the party because they think it makes sense to work with like-minded people but they don’t like that they’re in the party or how it was imposed on them by the provincial government. Or they’re in a party now but they won’t necessarily vote alongside fellow party members once they’re sitting on the horseshoe in council chambers.

What? Seriously, that’s all bullshit.

Of course they’re going to vote together on major items. And of course they’re going to take advantage of the extra fundraising space. Why else would you run in a party if you’re not going to behave like a member of a party? 

It’s been said many times that municipal parties are being allowed by the UCP because it tips the balance in favour of the candidates they would prefer. It really couldn’t be more obvious. They saw how many progressive leaning councillors were being elected in Calgary and Edmonton, including the mayors, and they needed to do something about it. 

This even appeared in the literature from Mike Jamieson, a candidate running with the Better Calgary Party. Too many conservatives were running against each other, leading them to split the vote and allow a progressive to win. So the solution is to slap a conservative slogan on a party, everybody unites around the party and that party candidate wins because it was made so much easier for voters to figure it out.

This is obviously terrible and it leads to bad candidates winning seats they don’t deserve. You only have to look at provincial and federal elections to see how often that happens. It happens a lot. Literally, you can have party members win election after election and when they finally leave, they have zero legacy to speak of. Well, maybe they’ll have a scandal.

Without parties though, voters looked much closer at the individual candidates. Some still seek out buzzwords that signify that they’re conservative or progressive, but in general they look more at the qualifications and character of the candidates. That’s actually how we ended up with a “progressive” majority in Calgary in 2021. They were the best candidates for the most part, at least on paper.

Some insider gossip confirms my point to be true. There are candidates across the three parties in Calgary that are truly just there to fill the ballot. You can go back through their social media history to see they don’t even truly align in terms of political values. I like some of the party candidates but I hope this experiment mostly fails and that voters reject what the provincial government imposed on us. Calgarians and Edmontonians need to firmly tell the UCP to stop meddling in local affairs.