Mayoral candidate switches to run for council
By Tim Kalinowski on July 14, 2021.
LETHBRIDGE HERALDtkalinowski@lethbridgeherald.com Lethbridge municipal candidate and local business owner Bradley Whalen will be withdrawing his name to run for the mayor’s office, and will run for city council instead.Whalen filed papers with the City Clerk’s office on Tuesday stating his intention to run for a council seat after announcing he would endorse mayoral candidate Blaine Hyggen instead of running against him.
Whalen, who owns Coco Vanilla Galactic Cantina, launched his mayoral campaign in March, and immediately drew controversy in some quarters for his desire to build a “sustainable rehabilitation community” on the edge of the city for the community’s homeless and addicted population.
“This is not about what the federal government is doing,” he stated at the time. “This is not about what the province is doing. It is about what the City is not doing. It is discouraging to see the rejection of service providers (the Mustard Seed) trying to come into the city to do something positive.
“If it has to do with giving out needles and helping addicts out, the City is all for it. But when it comes to preventative measures to try to tackle the opioid crisis, to try to tackle addictions, try to help the homeless, the City doesn’t seem very interested in helping that vulnerable sector.”
Critics argued just moving the problem to the edge of the city does nothing to address the real needs of the vulnerable community, and was more about getting the problem out of sight rather than helping.
Whalen also endorsed a Ward system for the city, and advocated for more help for Lethbridge’s struggling business community coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Whalen, who is a relative newcomer to the city (arriving in 2014), said his lack of longstanding ties to the community gave him an outsider advantage when it came to addressing the many pressing issues facing the city.
To read more about Whalen as a candidate view The Herald’s related story at https://lethbridgeherald.com/news/lethbridge-news/2021/03/27/political-newcomer-launches-city-mayor-campaign/ Follow @TimKalHerald on Twitter 4
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