Sadly, it's mostly about race

 So, Jytoi Gondek has been elected mayor of Calgary.  Why?  In my view it's all about race.  Amerjeet Sohi was elected in Edmonton, again a racial victory, with Edmonton's population being only 65% Caucasian and Sohi being South Asian.  (By the way, Sohi, like many other politicians, has lived off the public purse in some forum or other since 2007, when he was elected to the Edmonton City Council.  Nice gig, but I digress.)

Calgary has a population of more than 754,000, 116,000 of which are South Asian, Gondek's group.  If you add in the other ethnic groups, you've garnered another approximately 260,000 votes.  Pit that against a ridiculous 27 mayoral candidates, the rest of the field was scattered about here and there, leaving Jeromy Farkas to get what he could.  In spite of this racial/ethnic voting block, Farkas still managed to come a close second.  

And to the claim by the Laurentian Elite that, contrary to popular belief, Calgary and Edmonton are not redneck cities because they have elected racial minority mayors, I would say, poppycock.  It is precisely because Calgary and Edmonton -- but especially Calgary -- are redneck towns that ethnics of all stripes band together and vote en block for the racialized candidate.  Is this out of fear?  Is it because many of them are here illegally, with fuzzy, messy paperwork?  Is it because they don't understand the issues and simply vote for the candidate who is not white?  Probably a bit of all those things, but it remains my contention that we have ethnic mayors because the ethnics voted for them.  

Even though I now live in Cochrane -- a homogeneous white town if ever there was one -- and thus could not vote in the election, I was a Jeromy Farkas supporter.  Was the fact that he was the first openly LGBTQ (not sure into which category he falls, so I'm throwing them all in?) candidate to ever have run on this issue?  Probably because the majority of rednecks would certainly not have voted for him.  But the guy actually had a very detailed platform and plan for the city, which he published in the newspaper and which Gondek is now cribbing.  Gondek's plan was all bread-and-circuses and universal Pollyanna gobbledegook about "inclusion and blah-blah-blah.  Not an idea to be found anywhere in it.    

Farkas had declared early with much support, but Gondek snuck in later and grabbed all the ethnic minorities (also traditionally not too LBGTQ-friendly) who had always voted ethnically for outgoing Nenshi en mass.  Frankly, I think it's high time people started voting with their brains, instead of their culture and colour.  I was going to say that's what a mature, thinking electorate does, but then I remembered how Trudeau got in and that notion went right out the window.

In her victory speech, Gondek said she was going to go green, re-fill the vacant downtown office towers with thriving businesses, cooperate with the province (but not too much), listen to everyone (and anyone) and thus be the mayor of everyone (and their brother).

Not possible.  But, then again, she has a PhD in Urban Sociology (or as I say, a PhD in "Woke") so maybe she plans on giving money to everyone in town?

Nenshi fought with the province too because he forgot that municipalities are creatures of the province and must go, cap-in-hand, for the bucks that float all their pet "green" projects.  Start fighting with the province and the province will tell Mayor Gondek to run along and ask the feds, at which point, the feds will remind Ms. Gondek that the money she seeks must come from the province.  So, run along again she will be told to do.

As the great philosopher Mike Tyson said, "Everyone has a plan until he gets punched in the mouth." (See "Great lines," March 7th, 2021)  Put up your dukes, Madame Mayor.

Speaking of punches in the mouth, Doug Ford sure got one for telling people thinking of coming to Toronto to only come to work, not get on the dole.  Immediately, people of colour were up-in-arms hysterically!  Problem was, Ford didn't say anything about colour at all, just about people who planned to get welfare.  So, the rhetorical question is, why did these hysterics automatically assume he was referencing colour?  As I said, rhetorical.

And in case anyone dares think this a racist post, forget about it.  I am talking demographics and numbers.  As I have always said, we are all one race:  The human one.  All behaviour is determined by upbringing, culture and personal decisions.