Early career and hiatus

Cavanagh entered politics during the 1968 Edmonton election, when he ran for Edmonton City Council as an alderman.^[3] He was defeated, finishing fourteenth of thirty-two candidates in an election in which the top twelve were elected.

He was more successful during the 1971 election; Edmonton had adopted a ward system (in which three aldermen were elected in each of four wards) to replace the previous at-large method of election, and Cavanagh placed second of seventeen candidates in Ward 4. He was re-elected in the 1974 election, when he placed first of nine candidates.^[3]

On November 7, 1975, mayor William Hawrelak died in office. After nine ballots, Council chose Cavanagh over Laurence Decore to serve out his term,^[4] but when ran to retain the position in the 1977 election, he finished third, nearly ten thousand votes behind victor Cec Purves and under a thousand behind Decore (he did finish well ahead of former mayor Ivor Dent, however). He stayed out of politics for six years following this defeat, serving as chair of the Government of Alberta's Alberta Rent Decontrol Appeal Board (tasked with the elimination of provincial rent controls) from 1977–80 and as a communications advisor for the Alberta Energy Company Ltd. from 1980–84.^[3]

He rejected overtures from Neil Stanley Crawford to run for the Legislative Assembly of Alberta as a Progressive Conservative, commenting later that he had little interest in sitting as a backbencher after serving as mayor of Edmonton, and that Premier Peter Lougheed had not been prepared to promise him a cabinet position.

Return to council

He returned to Council after the 1983 election, when he finished second of eight candidates in Ward 6 (Edmonton's ward system had been revised such that there were two aldermen elected from each of six wards). He was re-elected in the 1986 election, placing first of nine candidates.^[3]

In 1988, Decore (who had been elected mayor in 1983) resigned to take a position as leader of the Alberta Liberal Party. Again Council chose Cavanagh to serve as interim mayor, and again he was defeated soundly when he sought re-election^[3] - this time, he finished with fewer than half the votes of Jan Reimer during the 1989 municipal election.

He won his old aldermanic seat back in the 1992 election, and he was re-elected in the 1995, 1998, 2001, and 2004 elections. In May 2007, Cavanagh announced that he would not seek election in the 2007 municipal election.^[5]

Political views, initiatives, and reputation

Cavanagh had excellent ties with Edmonton's immigrant and especially Chinese communities. Members of the Chinese community threw him a dinner for his eightieth birthday, and he claims that he can say "vote for me" in "15 or 17 languages".^[6] He was an advocate for the development of Edmonton's North Saskatchewan River valley as a park area, despite the fact that he is not generally known as an environmentalist. Cavanagh also played a significant role in having the Hotel Macdonald designated a Municipal Heritage Resource in 1985, saving it from destruction.^[1] In 2015 a meeting room in the hotel was named after him, with his family donating a portrait of Cavanagh to hang in it.^[6]

Despite his experience in removing rent controls during the 1970s, he urged Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach to consider reintroducing them during Alberta's recent economic boom and accompanying tight housing market.