Andreas Adams has never voted. He is not entirely sure who serves as Alberta's premier. He suspects there are four candidates running in his riding, Calgary-Fort, but he can't name any of them.
The 27-year-old knows Alberta's 29th general election came up sooner than planned. It has something to do with some new bills or taxes.
"By Anderson. Anderson? What's his name?" Mr. Adams snaps his fingers, trying to remember who is responsible for all this. "Prentice?"
Mr. Adams is the head coffee roaster at Rosso Coffee Roasters in Calgary's affluent Inglewood neighbourhood. He placed fifth in the Canadian National Barista Championship last year. Mr. Adams cares about what he calls sustainable and positive growth. He is into coffee, music and art.
And he is the kind of guy who could be a big factor in Calgary-Fort, a diverse riding in play in Alberta’s May 5 election. The Progressive Conservative incumbent – a man who represented the riding for 18 years – is sitting out this election. Joe Ceci, the NDP candidate and a city councillor for 15 years, is a threat to the PC’s supremacy in this corner of Calgary. He is considered the man to beat. If Mr. Ceci clinches the riding, he will become the NDP’s first member of the legislature from Calgary since 1989.
Mr. Adams has never voted, not because he is apathetic or dim, but because if he is going to vote, he wants to be informed.
He says it would not take much to get him jazzed about politics and turn him into a voter. “Just some engagement.”
Find him. Talk to him. If a candidate came along and discussed issues and shared Mr. Adams’s views, he could get on board. In a province where elections tend to be more about procedure than policy, Mr. Adams and those like him are an untapped political resource for the government’s challengers. The Tories have ruled Alberta for 44 years, but opponents were not able to capitalize on their sliding popularity in 2012. Mr. Adams sees a lot of NDP signs in his neighbourhood and suspects – although admits he doesn’t really know – the orange tent would be his natural political habitat.
Alberta’s PC Leader, Jim Prentice – yes, that’s the Premier’s name – does not seem like Mr. Adams’s cuppa.
Calgary-Fort, however, is far from uniform. Inglewood is the kind of place where residents hold meetings to protect historic homes in their inner-city neighbourhood. The community hall hosts a drum circle on Fridays. NDP signs seem to fit in Inglewood. But Calgary-Fort is more than just a gentrified pocket with funky coffee shops and wine bars. Its five candidates – one more than Mr. Adams guessed – will also have to lure folks in working-class neighbourhoods a social galaxy away from Inglewood.
Natasha Legros lives in Calgary-Fort, but she does not know it. Like Mr. Adams, she does not know the candidates’ names in her riding. Ms. Legros, who lives in a community called Ogden, works at Superstore and is outside prepping her camper for the summer. She is wearing a white Calgary Flames T-shirt, with a little Budweiser logo in the corner.
“I know I should pay more attention, but I don’t,” she says. “Honestly, I’ve been paying more attention to hockey.”
Ms. Legros cares about childcare and health care. The 39-year-old has three kids, and one of them is out of the house. She doesn’t much care for politicians.
“I think they all say the same thing, but nothing ever gets done or resolved.”
Still, she votes, and she will again May 5. But for whom, she won’t say. Ms. Legros follows the old rule about not talking politics or religion. She may not know her preferred candidate’s name, but she has the party picked.
Wayne Cao represented Calgary-Fort for the PCs in the legislature for 18 years. Police officer Andy Bao Nguyen will take his place on the ballot next month. He faces an experienced challenger for the riding’s conservative voters: Wildrose candidate Jeevan Mangat was just 144 votes shy of dethroning Mr. Cao in the 2012 election. The Liberal candidate, Said Abdulbaki, placed third that year, with 10 per cent of the vote. He, too, is running again. The NDP came fourth in 2012, with 6.7 per cent of the vote. This time, however, the NDP has Mr. Ceci on board, and the party’s provincial leader, Rachel Notley, has momentum on her side.
Indeed, Mr. Prentice is trailing both the Wildrose and the NDP in the polls. Pundits declared Ms. Notley the winner of Thursday night’s leaders’ debate. The NDP is expected to win several seats in Edmonton, but gaining ground outside of that government town will be hard. Mr. Ceci’s experience as a city councillor is working in the party’s favour.
And that is where folks like Ed Sauer come into play. Mr. Sauer is 74, living in a basement in Dover. There is a Ceci sign on his lawn, to the left of a lawn ornament in the form of a horse pulling a cart carrying a teddy bear.
“They all say they do this, and they do that, but in the end they don’t do too much anyway,” Mr. Sauer says.
He is sitting on his lawn, legs stretched out in front. He is pulling dead shoots out of the flowerbeds. Mr. Sauer, who is originally from Saskatchewan, is wearing a flannel coat over a flannel shirt. Mr. Ceci has been here before – although, not during this campaign. But Mr. Sauer says that is enough to secure his vote.
“I don’t know. I just vote for the person I know.”