Liberal, African, Muslim...

Masters in Public Policy from Harvard, along with work experience at McKinsey & Co.

I'd say he's qualified.

 

all it takes to run a major city is a masters and a consulting job?

(not to say he's not qualified...i know nothing about him)

 

well not just a masters and consulting experience, both those programs he came through only usually higher and take in the best of the best, so that means his results and performance was top of the top ...

that said, there are already Muslims in the parliament and higher positions in Calgary, Say what you want about Canada it has been successful in establishing a pluralistic society which is impressive and the every nation could look to as an example

 

Well that's a heck of a lot more experience than some people running for US Senate have.

 

Arent' there also a lot of mixed race marriages in canada?

 

So when is he going to impose Sharia law?

 

Isn't he wealthy?

That's really the only qualification one needs to hold a public office.

 

He seems to have a good background and seems to be a smart guy, as far as I can tell from that article. My guess would be that he will do a good job.

 

No, he’s not wealthy. I’m sure he spent less than the other two front runners, and they both had had high profile Conservative strategists working on their campaigns as well. There were a lot of factors at play in this election, which makes the results difficult to analyze, but maybe the single biggest factor was a generational shift and a large scale mobilisation of the younger demographics. Voter turnout in this election was 53%, which was up from 33% in the last civic election. The incumbent wasn’t running this time, however, and to some extent the other two candidates split the right wing vote, but Higgins is really more of a moderate, and Nenshi is more of a moderate himself.

Ric McIvor is only 52 but he was the long time city councillor and aligned with the old guard. Barb Higgins is 48 and has a very high profile because she was an anchor on one of the main suppertime news shows for 20 years, but she had no firsthand political experience. Nenshi is 38 and a prof at Mount Royal University, and he was the outsider who was a very long shot to win when the campaign started, but he’s very smart and he worked the social media very well, and he surged out of nowhere to capture 40% of the vote. Nenshi also scored well on some specific issues. He is for the airport tunnel, but he also scored points by questioning some key spending issues, including the way that the Calgary Police have been spending their money.

There are a number of other things about Nenshi which are now receiving quite a bit of attention from the press in other parts of Canada, but I don’t think they were issues here. Nenshi is an Ismaili Muslim. He’s single. He lives in his parents’ house. He’s fairly effeminate and he showed up at the gay pride parade. What I think did catch Calgarians attention, however, is that he’s very smart and educated, and he has some very good ideas about how to make Calgary better, and he caught the attention of the gen x and y crowd and he got them out to vote. Here’s a Tedx talk he did about Calgary. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNAMH2_CLfo
The extent to which he did this is very, very, surprising, however. He was at something like 8% in the polls when the campaign started, and not many people even knew who he was. He's Calgary's Obama, in a sense, and I think his election is another sign that the the younger generations are ready to get involved politically, and they're ready for change.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ric_McIver
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barb_Higgins

 

thanks grizzled, very interesting. if we can keep the young interested in voting in this country we can keep getting fresh faces and fresh ideas as well.

 

cleverly disguised "see i made this post once, how can i hate all muslims?!?!" post.

 

Very good to hear.

I myself am an Ismaili Muslim, and he's actually distantly related to the Nenshi's.

Even more interesting is that Canada in specific has become very pluralistic in the past years. The leader of the Ismaili faith, the Aga Khan even opened a Centre for Pluralism there. One can only hope that this spreads throughout the continent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Centre_for_Pluralism

 

I don't hate good ol' "liberal African muslim" Obama either .

 

Dude seems legit.

I'm not sure I buy his over-the-top love of everything Calgary, but he seems to be a great fit for the job.

 

And when you look up the phrase "damning with faint praise," here is your model sentence. :grin:

 

lmao

rep'd

 

The Aga Khan? I thought Aga Khan was one guy. I also thought Ismaili's were limited to be of Paki/Indian origin. Interesting.