{"id":38866,"date":"2017-10-17T15:23:33","date_gmt":"2017-10-17T21:23:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/?p=38866"},"modified":"2017-10-23T08:45:15","modified_gmt":"2017-10-23T14:45:15","slug":"farrell-has-another-close-call-in-ward-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/2017\/10\/17\/farrell-has-another-close-call-in-ward-7\/","title":{"rendered":"Another election, another close call"},"content":{"rendered":"

A<\/span>nother election, another close call for Druh Farrell.<\/p>\n

T<\/span>he incumbent councilor for ward 7 in the inner city, won again on Oct. 16, besting her main opposition, Brent Alexander, 9,753 votes to 8,916,<\/p>\n

Farrell’s close shave mirrored her last campaign in 2013 when she won with just 37 percent of the vote but still defeated a large field of challengers.<\/p>\n

Ward 7 includes the communities on the north side of the Bow River, from Parkdale east to Bridgeland, along with the SAIT and U of C campuses.<\/p>\n

Farrell described the race as \u201cthe most negative campaign I have ever seen in Calgary.\u201d<\/p>\n

It would have been \u201cso easy\u201d to go negative, said Farrell, but she refused to \u201cgo there.”<\/p>\n

She \u201crefused to believe\u201d that Calgarians wanted to delve into that kind of campaigning, with lawsuits, the \u201canonymous trolls on Twitter,\u201d and the unnamed political action committees.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should be very concerned about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her campaign team kept it positive, and they talked about the issues and found solutions.<\/p>\n

In an interview before results came out at the 1918 Tap and Table in Kensington, Farrell said she is excited to show the public how she can bring more \u201cdiversity.”<\/p>\n

Furthermore, once Farrell rests up, her first order of business she would like to address in council is secondary suites.<\/p>\n

She wants to get it out of council\u2019s hands and move it to a \u201cmore elegant, streamlined system.\u201d<\/p>\n

As well, the diversity she would like to see in council includes gender, culture, and race differences.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s have members of council understand that (diversity needs to be included),\u201d said Farrell.<\/p>\n

Election night proved to be an adventure for others besides the councillor for Ward 7.<\/p>\n

Elections Calgary had a few issues, including running out of ballots at multiple voting stations across the city.<\/p>\n

Voters stood in line for many hours in some cases, and stations were open well past the designated closing time of 8 p.m.<\/p>\n

That made counting late as well, and the first real results for anyone appeared on TV screens around the city at about 10 p.m.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll have to be better prepared next time. – Druh Farrell<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The races for council produced a mixed bag of incumbents and new people.<\/p>\n

Four wards, 3, 5, 6 and 11 sent new councillors to city hall, while incumbents took all the remaining races.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Druh Farrell, the incumbent councillor of ward 7 Calgary, won again on Oct. 17, 2017, with an \u201cunofficial\u201d count over her opposition, Brent Alexander, with an 837 vote difference, reads the election Calgary website. [ READ MORE ]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":429,"featured_media":38872,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"_ef_editorial_meta_text_assignment-slug":"S3 Druh Farrell","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,212,4,7,13],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-38866","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-image","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-city","8":"category-downtown","9":"category-east-village","10":"category-hillhurst_sunnyside","11":"category-news","12":"post_format-post-format-image"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/429"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38866"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39227,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38866\/revisions\/39227"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}