City Notebook: Behind the numbers

By COLLIN GALLANT on June 3, 2023.

cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant

Quick: Who got more votes? Michaela Frey or Danielle Smith?

The answer might provide some friendly jabs at the water cooler in the premier’s office in Edmonton, where the former MLA for Brooks-Medicine Hat is a special adviser to Smith.

For the record, Frey won the riding with 13,606 votes in 2019. Smith took it this past week with 13,316.

One quick comeback is that Frey was Smith’s campaign manager, so really, who’s to blame?

But numbers stand, and might bear scrutiny despite “sour grapes” being called on anyone looking at vote shares, especially from last fall’s byelection.

And, of course, a win is a win is a win, as one other town columnist put it this week in terms of the grander picture.

It provides an actual, very functional majority to govern with, and there’s little doubt the UCP will operate as if they’d ran the table.

A good stream of post-election commentary is about how Rachel Notley and the NDP blew their big chance.

Back to our original, local set of figures, though.

This time around, Smith zoomed past challengers with little question.

Four years ago, Frey also faced “independent conservative” Todd Beasley, who earned fewer than 2,700 votes that would seemingly be easy pickings for Smith in particular this time around.

But totals are relatively the same.

If the Beasley “Take Back” crowd didn’t vote this week, why the heck not?

If they did, what happened to 3,000 more traditional conservatives in the riding on election day?

It’s maybe academic.

The Hat’s UCP backers are pleased, and the local numbers for the New Democrats seem to be topped out.

Where the opposition party could take solace in the byelection winning most votes inside Medicine Hat city limits, there’s no silver lining in the southeast this time around.

Provincially, analysis reveals that about 2,500 total voters switching their votes in six Calgary ridings this week would have wound up giving the NDP a one-seat majority.

Yes, shoulda, coulda, woulda, but that’s for a party that can muster about one-third of the popular support in the best of times in, essentially, a two-party system.

Summer fun

Spectrum was set to get underway on Friday in Medicine Hat as the last month of school kicked off. The annual Brooks Rodeo is set for June 9-10, and Redcliff Days follow on the June 16-18 weekend.

A look ahead

Council meets Monday and the city’s audit committee will hear the first mid-year update on finances Tuesday.

100 years ago

The German mark fell below the value of the Austrian pfenning and at one point required 72,000 to equal a U.S. dollar in a “dizzying, vicious cycle” of devaluation,” the News reported June 1, 1923.

The Lake of the Woods Milling Co. would spend $500,000 to double capacity at its Medicine Hat plant, adding two stories and a second elevator toward reaching 2,000 barrels of flour per day. To supply the operation, elevators would be erected in Burstall, Hilda, Schuler, Climax and Frontier.

A new well at Sunburst Mont. gushed online at 3,000 barrels per day, filling a 600-yard berm around the well two feet deep with oil.

A plan by a village council in England to provide birth control information to married women would be illegal, that country’s health ministry stated.

A Catholic priest in Detroit shot and wounded an 11-year-old boy who was making off with a poor box at the church.

Police in Alabama reported a potential 35th victim in a string of unsolved axe murders that strung back two years.

Two-and-a-half inches of rain fell in Calgary on June 2, leading to concerns about the swelling Elbow River.

Tennis competition at Irvine would see the Maple Creek team treated to a grand dance that evening featuring orchestral music led by Jacob Glock and his saxophone.

Collin Gallant covers city politics and a variety of topics for the News. Reach him at 403-528-5664 or via email at cgallant@medicinehatnews.com