Former city councillor Jeromy Farkas is again running to be Calgary’s mayor in the fall municipal election.
It’s the former city councillor’s second run for mayor, after placing second to current Mayor Jyoti Gondek with 29 per cent of the total votes in the 2021 municipal election.
Farkas launched his campaign early Wednesday morning on his website.
In an interview with Global News, Farkas said he is running with a vision for the next 10 years as the city faces unprecedented population growth.
“I want to give Calgarians something to vote for, not against,” Farkas said. “This is not about the last four years, this is not about one person, this is about the next 10 years for Calgary. I strongly believe the next 10 years for Calgary is going to set us up for success or failure over the next century.”
Farkas said his campaign will be socially and fiscally responsible, with a platform of building a plan for the city’s growth, building housing, creating jobs, improving safety and trust in leadership.
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He insinuated that city council is “stuck” and “picking petty fights,” and that has contributed to a lack of trust in Calgary’s municipal government.
Farkas will be running as an independent candidate, and criticized political parties at the municipal level as entities that would “increase dysfunction.”
“I strongly believe that when Calgarians call up their representative, whether that’s a city councillor or mayor, they deserve to know their elected official is working for them rather than the narrow interests of a political party,” Farkas told Global News.
Farkas served as Ward 11 councillor between 2017 and 2021 and was often criticized for being a contrarian on council, notably voting against the original arena deal, and calling for spending cuts and pay freezes.
He was once removed from a city council meeting for refusing to apologize for a social media post that city officials later deemed broke council’s code of conduct.
“I always stood up for financial responsibility, and I always supported public safety, and I helped make Calgary one of the best places on earth to be able to live in,” Farkas said when asked about reflecting on his time on council. “That’s what I want to be able to continue to do.”
But Farkas said he’s grown over the years.
Following the 2021 municipal election, Farkas embarked on a 4,270-kilometre journey on the Pacific Crest Trail, which raised more than $200,000 for Big Brothers Big Sisters Calgary and Area.
He then became CEO of the Glenbow Ranch Park Foundation, in which he advocated to protect the park from a government of Alberta upstream flood mitigation project on the Bow River, which will now be built near the Ghost River Dam.
“I’ve learned leadership means owning your mistakes, it means attacking the problem and not the person, and it means not having to be the smartest person in the room,” Farkas said. “Real success comes from being able to build and lean on a team.”
So far, Farkas joins previous 2021 mayoral race rivals Gondek and former councillor Jeff Davison in the 2025 mayoral campaign, as well as ex-police commission chair and Calgary lawyer Brian Thiessen.
The municipal election is scheduled for Oct. 20.
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