Mayor running for Liberal MP spot

I have often wondered what political parties my municipal govt members side with. In recent years, I made a wild guess that our mayor was a liberal, and today he announced his plans to take a leave of absence as Mayor - to go after the Liberal MP seat for our district. Wow what a surprise.

I wonder how he will fair, because while he won the spot of mayor again in our last city election, the Liberals do not do very well around here. If some of the mayor's buddies decide to vote for him as our MP, it will most likely be the first time in their lives that they put a little checkmark next to 'Liberal'. I cannot decide if this guy thinks that he is so loved, people will forget the party line and vote for him, or if he just thinks his chosen party needs a new leader and he will take his defeat with grace. But if (when) he doesn`t win, we will officially have a Liberal party candidate working as our mayor - as it seems to be his intention to slide back in as mayor if (when) he doesn`t become our new MP. To put this in a little more perspective, the last federal general election ended this way:

Con MP: 26, 949 votes
Lib MP:   2, 540 votes (ouch)

Even the NDP had almost double the Liberal count with 4, 187 votes
and the Green party was close with 2,338 votes.

So, our Mayor thinks that he can maybe beat that? Does he think we love him so much he is going to pull off a 20,000+ coup of votes in the district?

If you go back to the 2006 general election, the Con MP (Monte Solberg back then) had over 35,000 votes, while the Lib candidate had 3,737 votes. Going back further, in 2004 the Cons took over 60% while the Liberals had less than 25%. And it's looked like that for, oh, at least 30-35 years now? I believe since 1968 actually. Good luck Mr Mayor, I will be interested in seeing if the normal number of votes for the Liberals goes up or if it manages to stay along the same dismal path. Or if people will decide to vote for the person (aka a mayor vs in the past a pretty much unknown candidate) instead of the party.... will they be standing there with their little pens shakin, confused and bewildered? Unsure of what to do? Or will they just pretend they will support their buddy and tick off Conservative like very other year of their adult voting lives? I am seriously interested to see the results.

My other interest is in wondering if people will think about this when the next civic election comes around. What if this mayor runs again? It was pretty darn close last time, between him and a pretty well known conservative candidate (44% for him, 42% for her) - but now we KNOW he is a Liberal and he might find a little wee problem in the future.

As an add-in, and I do not mean to diss this person if they still happen to have the link to my blog and read it LOL, but I clearly remember when this mayor won the last election, and a guy I know's wife had a fit. She said something very close to this on her FB or Twitter: "OMG are you that scared of having a female mayor that you would vote for that militant son of a bitch????" ... and now comes a wee moral dilemma. This guy is a Liberal voter and now must check off the name of someone his own wife was clearly disappointed in just 5.5 months ago.... He did admit that the mayor is not his favorite person, but is a strong candidate to run against the current Cons MP. Yes - that he definately is. He is not only known as Mayor, he was also the police chief for many years. He has a lot of friends in all sorts of circles - but will it be enough to turn such a major tide? Will his friends, who voted Cons allllllllll these years despite their friendship with him, and doubtless political debates from time to time, give up their usual voting beliefs and choices just because they know HIM.

In this election especially, if these same people want the federal Conservative Party to win a majority instead of being stuck in a minority or lose, are they going to risk losing a seat to the Liberal party just because they know the mayor/former police chief? Will they REALLY take that risk, even if they do think he is a better representative for our city directly?

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A little update,,, the news only just broke today but I read through comments at our local news website and in the calgary herald and by far as of right now, the people are not happy. I'm sure I will see some positive comments soon, but so far I have not seen ANY in our local news, and only a couple in the herald. Oh boy - I might actually be excited about our local section of the election for once. I really want to see what will happen. In all my past years it was only 'yup, the Cons won by a landslide again'... now I will be paying much closer attention to the Liberal tally and comparing it with past years.