Council candidate Kaleb Orge, a local standup comedian and passionate Hatter, says residents need to make their voices heard this election, and hopes to see very few votes not cast.--News Photo Anna Smith
asmith@medicinehatnews.com
While he isn’t expecting Hatters to necessarily make him their first choice, council candidate Kaleb Orge believes he belongs in the top eight.
Orge feels a strong sense of obligation to the city; he shared that he has been working to become the kind of person he would feel comfortable voting for since the last election, when he was spurred into action. A career standup comedian, Orge feels he has the potential to present a unique perspective on council.
“I’ve been living in Medicine Hat for my whole life. We have the blessing of being a retirement community where a lot of people come to have a great quality of life when other cities are too expensive, and I have been a beneficiary of that,” said Orge, who explained he lives with a disability and does receive assistance.
“In some ways, I live like the city and everyone else, because I live on a fixed income,” said Orge. “I know what the struggles are, and I’m not just thinking about the last 10 or 15 years I have after retirement, I’m going to be here for another 40 to 50 years, hopefully. Council needs someone who’s thinking those 50 years ahead and can laugh about it when the rough decisions have to be made.”
He also seeks to protect and bolster the city’s public utilities as a solid electrical company. The potential of them being sold before the last election was the issue that pushed him to take an interest in municipal politics in the first place, said Orge.
Above all, Orge wants to see more housing opportunities in Medicine Hat. This includes high and mixed density housing, but also includes those who seek to build their million-dollar dream homes and making more opportunities for people to become homeowners.
“The more people that come in, the more people that own houses, the more people that are invested in the community, the more people that own a piece of it, the more prosperous we all are, because we all have a stake in this city,” said Orge.
To accomplish that however, he continues that the city is going to need a cohesive council who can work together, make hard choices and take criticism from the public, something he feels qualified to contribute to. As a comic, he is used to receiving heckling, and is more than willing to be the one to “say the quiet part out loud” to help the overall council prosper.
“I will gleefully throw them myself under the bus for this city. It’s what I do,” said Orge.
With a broad, if shallow, base of knowledge on several subjects and a deep desire to learn, Orge is looking to spend as much time as possible learning from people before the election and hopefully afterward, to deepen his understanding of what matters to the city and what kind of councillor he needs to be.
“Here’s the facts. Everybody’s got eight votes for councillor, and most people will likely know and actively want about three of them on council,” said Orge. “You’ve got a good bet that maybe five or six people might be good choices. But if we can’t do better than chance, we don’t deserve to get in.
“What I want is for people to actively pick eight people, and I’m entirely happy to be your eighth choice. I think I could do some real good for this city, but what I want above all else is for nobody to leave their votes on the table,” said Orge.
He will be running his campaign through his Facebook page, where those interested can see more of his platform, or they can reach out through the Mad Hatter Comedy Club to speak with him.
