EDITORIAL: Exciting election

What an interesting election we have appearing to shape up, no more so in the hotly contested mayor’s race.

Heading into this year, incumbent Keith Hobbs had to be considered the prohibitive favourite, despite a few stumbles along the way.
Things got exciting when former two-time mayor Ken Boshcoff, who became an at-large councillor in 2010, joined the race.

Then they really heated up last week, when former CBC Radio’s Shane Judge, a longtime city hall reporter, threw his hat into the ring.

Judge drew a line in the sand, hoping to cash in on the anti-event centre crowd, calling for the project to be shelved for at least a decade until the city’s economic fortunes improve.

Hobbs is taking the polar opposite approach, emphatically backing the $109-million project, while Boshcoff appears to be trying to slide up the middle, sitting on the fence.?On one hand he says the city needs a new facility.?On the other he’s not sure the finances are in place.

Toss in city-hall watchdog Henry Wojak, no stranger to calling council and administration out on their free-spending ways, and outsiders Colin Burridge and Doug Mackay and it’s clear this race has the makings of an all-time great campaign. Oct. 27 can’t come quickly enough.