Naheed Nenshi, the mayor of Calgary, and Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, N.J., have a lot in common. For one thing, they’re likely to be followed on Twitter by people who have never even been to Calgary or New Jersey.
And as both have had occasion to demonstrate, they can hold a city together during a natural disaster. They’ll go where the problems are and stay as long as they’re needed. It’s hard to tell when it’s mere gimmick and when it’s public service, and whether there is even a difference in their minds. Does it matter? Good communication is good communication.
They were both underdogs in civic politics, now in their 40s, with big grins and big personalities. They speak plainly, but they don’t talk down to people. They don’t hide their intelligence, and they expect intelligence in voters.
Being willing to raise an eyebrow now and again doesn’t seem to hurt their popularity. Nenshi jokes in public about federal politics in a way a less-confident mayor might not. Booker is a mouthy vegetarian, which has got to be at least as risky for a U.S. politician as being an atheist.
This is how they campaign while they govern: They do a good job. They’re funny. They respect voters enough to act like real human beings, albeit real human beings with an overt political agenda. They appeal to voters’ better natures, not their basest fears.
And for this, they are deservedly stars.
But there’s one big difference between them: Cory Booker is after the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate. Nenshi, so far, seems content to stay in municipal politics.
That’s not for a lack of people calling on him to run at the federal level, or suggesting it would be a natural next step. To take just one of many examples, Maclean’s magazine noted that because of his competence during Alberta’s horrifying floods, Nenshi “has transformed since last Thursday from a competent local pol to a national phenomenon — the sort of leader you could easily picture on the federal stage.”
Yes. You could. You could picture him bobbing up and down on the backbench, or carefully articulating talking points on talk shows. I hope that wouldn’t happen, but that’s the culture he’d be joining.
Besides, the skills that make a mayor successful don’t always translate to other orders of government. Take Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson, for example.
He doesn’t have the relaxed charisma of a Nenshi or a Booker, but he does tend to win most of his fights. One of the skills that has served him well in local politics is his famous ability to remember names and faces; the database in his mind must be vast. Another ability is his willingness to show his face at every strawberry social and ribbon-cutting. Both skills make people feel respected and important.
Those skills don’t translate as well in other kinds of government. When Watson went to Queen’s Park, he did well enough, but he faded into the noise of provincial politics. Voters in Barrie or Peterborough don’t care whether the minister for health promotion is likely to remember their names, if he ever makes it out to a clinic opening.
That’s not to say that constituency-level work can’t be put to work in provincial and federal politics. Jason Kenney, the minister of citizenship and immigration, uses the same sorts of gladhanding skills as successful mayors do, to show immigrant communities that he’s listening, he’s working hard and he cares. That’s not applicable to every portfolio, though, and not everyone is as skilled as Kenney has been in carving out a bailiwick.
Maybe we should stop speculating about whether Nenshi will run federally, and just let him be a good mayor. Good mayors are important, especially when disaster strikes. And as Canada has amply demonstrated of late, good mayors can be hard to find.
