Keith Gerein: Why did council incumbents have such a difficult night in Edmonton’s civic election?

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Edmontons would have to go back more than a quarter century, to 1995, to find the last time such upheaval occurred in a single municipal election.

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That year a total of five councilors lost their seats, along with then-mayor Jan Reimer. The council had only 11 members at the time, so the result represented a massive shakeup of the dynamics of the city council.

Either way, the 2021 vote should also be seen as a switch election.

The victory of the city’s first mayor of color, the achievement of gender parity on the council, and the election of more racialized candidates than ever before are substantial milestones, making it even more remarkable that they were achieved with less than 40 percent of participation.

But beyond those events, the other extraordinary event on Monday was the blow to the incumbent, the glass shield that generally provides near-bulletproof protection at the municipal level. Due to a number of interrelated influences – low voter turnout, disparities in name recognition, campaign experience, and fundraising power – holding civic office tends to be the safest job in politics.

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So when four sitting councilors, half of those running for reelection, are suddenly told to go clean their offices, you know something has gone wrong.

What is that something, that’s the real mystery, but there are definitely some prime suspects we can pin to the wall.

The first factor that comes to mind is redesigned district boundaries, which can affect incumbents’ community connections and name recognition.

This may have been an especially relevant factor for Tony Caterina, the 14-year council veteran who made the curious gamble to run in the central O’day-min district, where he had never raced before.

He wasn’t the only one who thought he was a bad fit for the politics of the area, and I suspect Caterina did herself no favors on the familiarity front by refusing to attend most public forums.

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It’s also hard not to notice that three of the four defeated councilors, Caterina, Jon Dziadyk and Moe Banga, were among the council’s most conservative voices, an undesirable label these days given the widespread anger at the provincial government of the PCU. .

Similarly, all three were generally aligned in opinion and voting patterns with mayoral candidate Mike Nickel, and were the only councilors who consistently refused to sanction him for violations of their code of conduct. That perceived alliance was likely another poison pill, as all of the candidates Nickel supported during the election lost their careers.

However, ideology cannot explain everything.

For example, in the northern district of Tastawiyiniwak, voters have sent incumbents packing in two consecutive elections. Dziadyk was the beneficiary in 2017, then the victim, although her defeat went to a fellow conservative, Karen Principe, who was recently a UCP candidate.

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As such, we must look further, and I think it is worth considering whether one of the key factors consolidating the concern, apathy, may have played a minor role in this campaign. Or, in other words, there were some signs that more voters might have been paying attention.

Yes, that tends to happen anyway in municipal elections that feature an open mayoral race, and races that feature more than average partisanship, like this one did.

But I wonder if the prolonged pandemic has prompted more residents to tune in to local issues. And perhaps it softened some attitudes around safety and community, including things like speed limits, homelessness, recreation, and bike lanes.

As much as the previous federal election has produced voter fatigue, could it also have increased the general public interest in politics?

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What about the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement and indigenous activism? Could the publicity surrounding the debates on diversity, poverty and marginalization have influenced the change in voting patterns?

Also, it is worth noting the emergence in this election of some really sophisticated campaigns from various challengers, several of whom used social media and other engagement techniques very effectively. In relation to this, I noticed that many of the successful campaigns had an optimistic tone, which may have been what Edmontons were looking for after months of sadness.

“I think there were a lot of amazing women (in the race), frankly,” added Erin Rutherford, who criticized starter Bev Esslinger at Ward Anirniq.

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In that sense, the defeated incumbent who stands as an anomaly is Esslinger. Irony does not adequately characterize the fate of the two-term councilor, who worked hard to get more women elected, only to see herself become a victim of that success.

“Eight years ago I was the only woman on the council and everyone wanted to know how that felt. Eight years later, there are eight women on the board and now everyone wants to know how she feels, ”Esslinger said. “My challenge is that women are doing well and we stand up to each other.”

Regardless of the reasons for the exodus of councilors, Monday’s result is an important and positive development in civic politics, and not just for fresh blood pouring into city hall.

Elected officials should remind them that accountability remains essential to public service. It seems that voters sometimes pay attention, and when that happens, those hiding behind a glass shield of ownership may find it shattered much more easily than they would like.

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