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CALGARY — A video projector flashed an image of a tumbledown bungalow, possibly, on a good day, fit for a crack house. “$1.2-million house in Vancouver,” read the PowerPoint slide. It was superimposed over a shot of Calgary’s skyline, black-and-white, with gritty effects as if ripped from a televised political attack ad. In a way, it was. “Will your kids be able to afford to live in Calgary?” read the slide. “Learn how city planners are making Calgary unaffordable.”

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The event, this past Thursday, was the kickoff for new advocacy group Common Sense Calgary, which has taken aim directly at a wildly popular mayor — Naheed Nenshi. Mr. Nenshi has become a mainstream media celebrity, but has, in his three years in power, also antagonized some business and taxpayer groups, as well as right-wing pundits, such as the Sun News Network’s Ezra Levant, a Calgary native who has made himself into Mr. Nenshi’s tormentor-in-chief. He has called out the mayor for being too left-wing, while succeeding in drawing out the mayor’s occasional irascibility.

Monday is the nomination day for the Oct. 21 municipal election, and Mr. Nenshi is sure to romp to another victory. But that doesn’t mean the mayor is without opposition: conservative groups in the city are, like Mr. Levant, looking for the mayor’s weak spots. And they know that one is Calgary’s weak-mayor system: a city council where the mayor casts just one vote, and a bloc of eight conservative councillors has the power to set the city’s actual agenda.