Political strategist believes Knack is positioning himself as ‘the only progressive candidate’

Political strategist Najib Jutt joined CTV Your Morning Edmonton with insight on the municipal election that's a little more than a month away.

Many people believe no clear front-runner has emerged for the mayoral candidates in Edmonton. Political strategist Najib Jutt joined CTV Your Morning Edmonton’s Kent Morrison with insight on the upcoming municipal election.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Kent Morrison: There were five candidates participating in the debate on Friday night. Do you think there was a winner there?

Najib Jutt: Every candidate issued their statement saying that they won. I don’t think there was a clear winner. I think there was some separation in terms of ideas and maybe along the political spectrum with Andrew Knack being seen as the most progressive out of the five up there. But in terms of a clear winner, no, I wouldn’t say there was. There’s a lot of similar ideas, old stuff that we’ve seen and heard before, a lot of rhetoric and sloganeering, but I would struggle to say that there was an actual clear winner.

Kent: We had two candidates up there who have not been on council recently, Rahim Jaffer and Omar Mohammed. Do you think they did enough to make a name for themselves in this debate?

Najib: Rahim is a polished politician. He was an MP for quite a while. It’s been a while since he was but he knows what he’s doing in terms of campaigning. He needs to have a better understanding about municipal politics work. If Tim Cartmell’s campaign continues to be lackluster, Rahim could pull some of that conservative vote with him being a diehard conservative that he is.

Omar Mohammed is doing a great job getting attention. He got up on the stage as a newcomer, probably the only non-established politician up there. He’s good at getting attention but like the saying goes, “once you get attention, you better know something.” It’s pretty clear that he doesn’t really understand municipal politics. He doesn’t understand the difference between the operating budget and a capital budget and how the municipal governance act works. It’s important to understand these little things that are very, very different from other levels of government.

Kent: Has anyone been able to push themselves ahead?

Najib: I think that Andrew Knack is. He’s kind of setting himself part of being the only really progressive candidate, which is easy to do because everybody else is sort of lumped in the centre or on the right, looking for that conservative vote. It’s baffling to me because Edmonton has traditionally had progressive mayors, especially the last two. Also, the space is on the left while everybody else is crowding on the right. Part of it I think is their ideology, there’s nothing they can do about it. But I think there’s a real room to have some more progressive ideas and more progressive policies. It can’t just keep continuing to be about cutting taxes and cutting taxes. I think any smart voter knows that when politicians talk about cutting taxes on the campaign trail, it never happens. When in history have we cut taxes? Have taxes gone down? When in history has debt gone down? What people want to see is some good ideas around responsible spending.