One Calgary municipal political party is claiming a cooperation breakdown with another party has now led them to run candidates in wards where they claim there could be a vote split.
The A Better Calgary (ABC) party issued a news release earlier this week saying that they will now run candidates in all wards, a 180-degree turn from a prior commitment not to run members in wards where Communities First candidates would run.
Earlier this year, ABC said they held ward bypass votes among ward associations, allowing no candidate nominations in certain wards. They had said they wouldn’t run in Wards 1, 4, 7, 10, and 13. That’s now changed, according to the party.
According to the news release, the party learned this weekend that Communities First would run candidates in all wards already contested by ABC candidates.
“Despite repeated good-faith efforts to maintain unity among ‘common-sense conservative’ candidates and an unofficial understanding to avoid running like-minded candidates against each other to prevent vote-splitting, Communities First has chosen to rebuff this effort and instead compete in wards already represented by ABC-nominated candidates,” read their news release.
Gordon Elliott, president of ABC, said they’d done everything possible to avoid this outcome.
“We compromised, we cooperated, and we trusted. But that trust has now been broken,” Elliott said.
Elliott later said that Communities First told them to shut down and become an advocacy group instead of a political party.
ABC executive director Roy Beyer said that this turn of events is a “betrayal” of “common-sense Calgarians.”
“Vote-splitting only helps the union-led, left-wing candidates win—not because their ideas are better, but because the centre-right continues to divide against itself,” Beyer said.
ABC said they would now give their ward associations the ability to revisit their bypass vote decisions.
Full slate of candidates, if possible, said Sharp with Communities First
Communities First mayoral candidate and current Ward 1 Coun. Sonya Sharp told LWC that they’ve always maintained they would run as many candidates as they needed to.
“I don’t know where this breakdown in communication seems to be. It’s unfortunate that there’s now some situations evolving,” Sharp said.
Back in her mayoral launch, Sharp was asked if there would be 15 Communities First candidates, representing all wards and the mayoral position.
“We want 14 (councillors) and then a mayor candidate. Everyone wants that,” Sharp said back on March 31.
“The hope is to get as many members of Communities First, into those seats for October 20.”
At that event, however, candidates for ABC who were in attendance had indicated that a vote-splitting deal was being ironed out at the time.
Right now, Communities First has nominated eight candidates, most recently announcing Shane Byciuk as their Ward 12 candidate.
ABC has officially nominated two candidates, including Mike Jamieson in Ward 12 and Kenner Hachey in Ward 14, according to Elections Calgary.
