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Adrian Nieoczym
Kelowna residents are going to the polls today to select me a new workmate. Well, not literally of course -voters will actually be electing themselves a new city councillor- but it certainly feels that way.
Because my job is to cover city hall, whoever wins tonight is going to become a big part of my work life, someone I watch in action at council meetings and community events, someone whose phone number and e-mail address will go into my contact list and someone whose public Facebook pages and Twitter feeds (if they have them) I’ll start monitoring.
And that person will also be someone I talk to from time to time, trying to get them to explain their position on some issue or other.
So, please dear voters, pity the poor reporters and send us someone who is accessible and who gives good quotes.
From a purely selfish perspective, a city councillor’s politics matter much less than their contributions to good stories. But I suspect that for those residents who care enough about municipal government to vote in the by-election, a candidate’s politics, and how that influences their behaviour at the council table, matters a whole lot.
The candidates attended a job interview of sorts Wednesday evening when they took part in an all-candidates forum. Assuming the 150 or so members of the public who showed up are at least somewhat representative of the voting public-at-large, the forum offered a glimpse of what’s going through the electorate’s collective mind as it ponders who to hire as Brian Given’s replacement.
Based on which candidates got the most attention, it looks to me like the top contenders are Kevin Craig, Vern Nielsen and Todd Sanderson, with Mary-Ann Graham as something of a wild card.
Craig is the 19-year-old wunderkind who surprisingly came ninth in last November’s regular election and narrowly missed out on a council seat by 39 votes. It was a result that recast Craig from the supporting role of model young person into a serious player on Kelowna’s political scene.
On Wednesday, he was questioned in a way that suggested voters see him as someone who will inevitably get his shot to show what he can do but aren’t sure if they’re ready to give it to him just yet.
Judging by the laundry list of endorsements featured in ads run by both Nielsen and Sanderson the last couple of days, both of them have strong support in the business community. But if they split the business vote -in a by-election I suspect will have low voter turnout with the winner and runner-up separated by only a couple hundred of votes at most- it could create an opportunity for Craig or Graham to go up the middle and on to victory.
Both Nielsen and Sanderson were grilled Wednesday and didn’t stumble. They both support the CD-21 zone downtown redevelopment and are promising to bring the expertise they honed in successful private sector careers to their role at city hall. The came across as safe candidates, in the sense that they are unlikely to do anything too radical or surprising if elected.
As for Graham, I don’t quite see her as a front runner in this race, but its hard to dismiss her either. She is the only one of the top contenders who has been elected to public office before, having served as a representative on the Regional District board.
At the forum, Graham showed she is on much firmer ground running for local government, with a firmer grasp of the issues, than she was running provincially for the B.C. Conservatives. Her biggest challenge is that both she and Sanderson are small business owners based in Rutland and so draw on the same base of natural supporters.
I must admit that as I’m writing this, I’m filling with doubt. I could I end up being completely wrong and voters could do something I totally didn’t foresee, leaving me with egg on my face and having to write a mea culpa column next week.
But then I guess, at least I’d have a good story.
adrian@kelowna.com
250-575-3517
One Response to “Fishing for a story in the by-election tea leaves”
Tags: by-election, Kelowna, kevin craig, mary-ann graham, Todd Sanderson, vern nielsen
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4.8 % of Kelowna voters show interest in the future direction of their City Council. Why? There is a story here. Is it the demographic of the city? Observation I made is that in all my 30 years here I have never seen so many young people running for council and so many young people volunteering at the Polling stations. My questions are: what ages were the voters that showed up? Why did so many people become disengaged from the process of democracy? Is there a way at getting at some of the statistics such as which polling stations seemed to pull in the most voters? Why?
Please continue discussion on the forum: link