Naheed Nenshi: ‘No one has ever given me the manual on how to be a politician’ – Winnipeg Free Press
Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi has been described as the rock star of municipal politics but all that celebrity doesn’t mean he’s not prepared to roll up his sleeves and do some heavy work.
Nenshi is in Winnipeg this week, attending the Big City Mayors Caucus and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities annual conference, where he hopes to steer the country’s municipal leaders towards dealing with poverty and ensuring urban aboriginal policies can be better effective in big cities. He is set to stop by the Winnipeg Free Press News Café at 12:15 p.m. Thursday.
“No one has ever given me the manual on how to be a politician,” Nenshi told the Free Press in an interview earlier this week. “Sure, sometimes I get myself in trouble because someone asks me a question I actually answer, or someone is really rude and sometimes they get it back. Politicians, journalists and political scientists look at me aghast and say that’s not how it’s done but with me, even if all my foibles get myself into trouble, people see who I am and I think, in some way, people appreciate that.”
Nenshi is a self-described policy wonk and academic who came out of nowhere in 2010 to pull off what appeared to be a last-minute election night win to become Calgary’s mayor.
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