In this week’s discussion, Brigitte Pellerin doesn’t hold back – then again, Brigitte never really holds back – and calls me “polite.” There have been some eye-rolling developments.
First, Lisa MacLeod, after telling Ottawa that she would do some deep introspection about whether to run and get back to us sometime in August, suddenly dropped a Facebook Live post on a Friday afternoon before the August long weekend announcing that she was not running. There are a variety of views on whether this was a good idea. Mark Sutcliffe must have breathed a sigh of relief. Win or lose, MacLeod would have reduced his chances of winning a second term. That’s just a statistical fact. She could have turned the mayoral race into a free-for-all.
As any public relations practitioner knows, the timing of MacLeod’s announcement suggests that she wanted her flirtation with a mayoral run to disappear from the public imagination – fast. Why so fast? That’s the question everyone is asking. She could have teased a possible candidacy for another couple of weeks and extracted much more publicity value from it. As I argued in my column, I didn’t think she would choose “option two” (exit stage left) because of the damage it could do to her personal brand. Brigitte has a lot to say about that.
Second, Sutcliffe has decided to turn this into a very negative campaign. He isn’t just trying to turn Jeff Leiper into Catherine McKenney 2.0. Based on the language used by his campaign surrogates, John Baird and Madeleine Meilleur, in recent fundraising appeals, it appears that Sutcliffe wants to beat Leiper into a metaphorical pulp (Leiper calls it a “smear”) and make him politically radioactive to all but the most progressive suburban voters. In an election without widespread voter outrage, Sutcliffe needs his small ‘c’ Conservative suburban base to show up. Scaring them about Leiper and Lawson helps to ensure that his high margins of victory from 2022 in wards like Barrhaven West don’t fall off a cliff on October 26th.
Meilleur denied that her description of Leiper and Lawson as “ideological extremes of the political spectrum” was out of bounds when interviewed by CBC’s Arthur White-Crummey. She argued that candidates have to differentiate themselves during a campaign. White-Crummey reported that the Sutcliffe campaign intends to continue drawing sharp contrasts between the Mayor and his challengers.
Voters may not like negative campaigning, but it is an efficient strategy for an incumbent like Sutcliffe, who is fighting a two-front war against Leiper and Lawson. Sharp contrasts can help shore up support among the suburban voters who will ultimately decide who becomes Ottawa’s next mayor. Sutcliffe wants Leiper boxed in below 30 per cent, and preferably around 25 per cent – essentially Ottawa’s progressive vote.
As the pool of undecided voters continues to shrink, the Sutcliffe team also knows it needs to steer anti-Sutcliffe centrist voters toward Neil Saravanamuttoo. That’s one reason they are unlikely to attack him. They will gladly have Saravanamuttoo do some of their work by making Leiper appear less electable.
Eye-rolling or not, there’s no mystery as to what’s currently going on in the mayoral campaign.
Transcript
Brigitte Pellerin
I am rolling my eyes all the way back to my shoulder blades. In fact, one of them is about to fall out. Lisa MacLeod, after what – two weeks or so of “maybe I’ll run, I don’t know, I’m thinking about it” – decided “you know what, I’m not running.” Not to be nasty or anything, but that’s one way of getting attention, I guess. And to say something else... maybe that was not necessary. I know you’ve written about this, so I’m going to let you say a couple of things, and then I’ll pile on.
Evan Potter
I did two columns, and the last one I posted last night. In the first column, I said she would scramble the race — and she really would have. The current polling numbers would change completely in a five-candidate race, especially with a former politician of that level of experience coming in. And name recognition. She would have changed the entire race — it would have brought a lot of energy.
In the column I did yesterday, I said she had three options. She could run; she could exit, obviously; and thirdly, she could endorse somebody else — not run, but throw a full-weight endorsement behind another mayoral candidate. And when she had her Facebook Live announcement this afternoon at one p.m., she chose option number two. The door I thought was the least attractive for her personal brand. The column was really about her personal brand. I don’t know her, but I didn’t just speculate. I said: if you care about your personal brand, you don’t want to leave people hanging, with expectations out there. If you’re going to do a political tease like that, you want to commit. So I did not think she would choose door number two. But for personal reasons, she chose to leave. And it wasn’t door number three either — she did not endorse anyone this afternoon.
Brigitte Pellerin
That’s right. And — just to timestamp this, we’re recording late on Friday afternoon, July thirty-first — she also said publicly a few days ago that Mark Sutcliffe, whom she endorsed in twenty twenty-two, does not have her support this time. Or “he’s lost my support this time” — I forget exactly how she phrased it, but it was like that. So she’s likely not going to endorse Mark Sutcliffe. I don’t see her endorsing Jeff Leiper. That leaves Alex Lawson, which would seem a little odd given that — again, no offense to Alex Lawson — name-recognition-wise, he’s just not there yet. So that leaves her standing alone outside, which is just... weird.
Evan Potter
So that was the gist of my columns. I’ll also say: the major beneficiary of her decision today not to run is the Mayor. He did not want her standing next to him on the continuum between him and Lawson, as a third person on the centre-right. I think it has a neutral effect on the Leiper campaign. But as I’ve said before — maybe in my last column, or here with you — Neil Saravanamuttoo would have loved to have her in the race. It would have given him the old football bounce, where you don’t know where the ball’s going to land or which direction it’s going to go. The crazy Saravanamuttoo ball bounce — giving him just enough to maybe have a shot at being mayor. Without Lisa MacLeod in, that chance vanishes. And I’ve always said that the only realistic way — and we’ll talk about Neil later — that his campaign could be the winning campaign is if Jeff Leiper were to drop out. Anyway, over to you, Brigitte.
Brigitte Pellerin
So the very generous interpretation of what happened is that she naively — after people said, hey Lisa, how about you run? — considered it without filters, talked out loud about it, and then realized: gosh darn it, this may not help the Mayor, who would probably be her favourite choice among the candidates so far for mayor in 2026. And she thought, gee whiz, that’s really not a good idea, maybe I should step back and withdraw before it’s too late.
That’s the very generous interpretation. I am not buying it one bit. First of all, this is a person who’s been elected, I believe, six times as an MPP in Ontario. She was a cabinet minister. She is not naive. There are many things you could say about Lisa MacLeod, but ingénue is not one of them. She knows the game; she’s good at playing the game. I cannot understand what she thought she was doing — unless she really meant to go for it and put her name forward, because she would have had a chance. But then what? Did she chicken out, maybe? Did she realize: maybe I won’t have quite the endorsements I think I should have? I don’t know. It’s like — Lisa, you should have thought of this. The tease part of this game, for her personal brand, is a big point against her. People are going to look at that and think: you didn’t have to do this. Why? You were missing our attention? You wanted to be in the newspaper for a week? It doesn’t look good at all.
Evan Potter
That’s what I said. I didn’t think door number two was the door to go through. What do you think, Brigitte? Does she just want everyone to forget all this?
Brigitte Pellerin
You were just much more polite in how you said it. So anyway — case closed. At this point I don’t think anybody cares what she wants, because we’re just going to move on. That was just unpleasant. Bye now — go do other things. Don’t let the doorknob hit you on the way out.
Negative campaigning — since we’re all hot and bothered right now. Mark Sutcliffe, the Mayor. First of all, he brought back John Baird from the mothballs. Sorry — I used to like John Baird a lot. That was over a decade ago, when I used to quote him as foreign affairs minister. I remember working with John Baird; that was a long, long time ago. He’s entitled to his opinions and to endorse whoever he wants. But if that’s Mark Sutcliffe’s biggest name right now, we’re reaching back a little bit into the history books. Anyway — John Baird, kids, ask your parents — is out endorsing Mark Sutcliffe and calling the other guys — namely Jeff Leiper and Neil Saravanamuttoo, and also Alex Lawson, but in a different direction — extremists. Evan, this is bad. Everyone’s a radical, everyone’s going to jack up your tax bill or be way too far to the right — and I, Mark Sutcliffe, am the only reasonable, responsible adult in this race. I don’t know that this is treating Ottawa voters with the respect due to their intelligence. Not sure that’s going to work.
Evan Potter
Well, first of all, I’d tell people that typically an incumbent campaign doesn’t go negative unless they’re concerned.
Brigitte Pellerin
If that’s all they’ve got left, yes.
Evan Potter
That’s right. We know the statistics in Ottawa. Over the last five elections, I think it’s around eighty-eight percent — don’t quote me, it’s not precise — but the re-election rate of incumbents is way up there. In certain municipalities it’s over ninety percent. So if you’re an incumbent, and we all agree this election cycle is not one of outrage, you’re almost guaranteed to be re-elected. So why would you go into fear-mongering campaign mode — unless your internal polling is telling you something you don’t like? Typically, an incumbent will go into negative campaign mode if they are concerned about their prospects.
Brigitte Pellerin
I would say scared. I like your word — you’re the polite one today. I’m just sick of this now.
Evan Potter
Concerned about their prospects. So the fact that Mark Sutcliffe is using Madeleine Meilleur and John Baird to attack his opponents in a negative way — in an exaggerated way — I went out of my way in my columns to distinguish between dirty politicking and negative politicking. It’s not dirty; it’s negative.
Brigitte Pellerin
Right — what he’s doing is not dirty. It’s not Donald Trump or Pierre Poilievre dirty. It’s just very negative. And it’s also stupid.
Evan Potter
It’s very negative. And you have to ask how voters react to that. We analyze it, and we can tell you what it means: the Sutcliffe campaign is not confident they could win if they pursued a non-negative campaign — if they didn’t attack their main opponents. That’s surprising. And it should send a signal to the challenger campaigns that they have a chance. That’s a signal. He’s attacking me. He’s worried. But I will tell you, today, the Sutcliffe campaign sent out a letter through Jan Harder.
Brigitte Pellerin
Good grief — can we not have someone more current?
Evan Potter
And I read the letter, Brigitte. I can tell you there was no reference to the extremist challengers. So we can speculate. Did the Mayor direct his team to stop doing that? I don’t know. But in Jan Harder’s letter sent out today, there were no direct attacks on his challengers.
Brigitte Pellerin
Maybe they heard from people that it didn’t work out. Honestly, the only people who would believe Jeff Leiper is an extremist are people who already think he’s an extremist — and that’s a small portion of people in Ottawa. The same way some people already think Alex Lawson is an extreme right-winger; again, a minority. Most people — especially in Ottawa; this town is full of smart people — we’re more politically literate than this. You can tell the difference between someone who’s a little left of centre and someone who’s more left of centre. We are capable of dealing with the subtleties of political positions, in this town of all places. Insulting the intelligence of your voters — or your readers, or your viewers, or your audience — never works. It always blows up in your face, sooner or later. And I think he’s realized that. I think he got some blowback, like he did on the linger-downtown campaign.
And — sorry, that’s an inelegant segue — like he’s going to get on the St-Laurent LRT station. Now that’s a story I don’t think has made enough news this week. Unless you wanted to add more on the negative campaign — how about we dig into that one?
Evan Potter
Happy to dig into St-Laurent. I agree with you — and I circle back to the point I made last week. Within the [municipal] issue set, as seen through the eyes of average Ottawa residents, transit has gone down in priority. For those in the suburbs, transit is not a major issue; for those in the urban wards, it is. So the question is how this will play politically. When I saw the CBC report — people were very disappointed.
Brigitte Pellerin
I’m going to push back on what you said — because you said that this week and last week, and I heard from people, especially in Orléans, disagreeing with you, Evan. Out there — and Orléans is not the inner wards; it’s suburban — they said transit is a massive issue for them. So I’m just going to put this out there, and you may both be right. It may be that for some people in Orléans.
Evan Potter
It’s not me. I’m just quoting the Liaison poll, the Ottawa tracking poll. And we’ll see again in August with the next tracking poll. Congestion and transit is different, right?
Brigitte Pellerin
Very much so.
Evan Potter
But yes — transit. And it raises so many questions about the whole public transit system, and serious questions about accountability, again.
Brigitte Pellerin
That’s where — just to catch people up if they haven’t read the story — there are some serious issues with the station at St-Laurent, because it sits a little bit under the mall, and there are serious issues with the concrete. Things are falling down, falling apart. It’s going to become a safety problem — for riders, for workers, for whoever. So work has to happen in this station that will require the tracks to be temporarily — sometimes for significant periods — either reduced or shut down. It’s also going to cost almost eight million dollars or seven point something million. Fun. I thought this was a newish system — I guess not.
And what is really problematic — this is where it’s going to affect everyone in this city — is that the City has known. They’ve had the report from the consulting firm detailing what needs to happen since April. And it only became public because somebody who’s running for mayor — that was Jeff Leiper — pushed to get the media’s attention to it, saying the city knows already. We know this work needs to happen, and we are not communicating to the people using the system what is being planned. Because if this LRT is not running for four to six weeks, people have to make alternate plans — and it helps to know more than two weeks ahead of time. People have lives; they need to get organized. And we’re not telling anybody — the riding public or the driving public. This raises a big, big issue around secrecy. Why keep this a secret? It affects everyone. And, as you say, accountability — and then the costs, of course.
Evan Potter
People have been steadily losing confidence — over years now, not just recently — in the public communication coming from City Hall. Whether it was Lansdowne, or public transit, or storms, or fireworks. There’s just a loss of confidence in how the city communicates with its publics, its residents. Things aren’t getting better. And I think that change requires a cultural change, which can only come from the top. Clearly, the current Council has not been able to make that change. I know that Jeff Leiper has said publicly — months ago, at a public meeting — that one of the first things he’s going to do, I think he said within the first two weeks if he becomes mayor, is address the failing of public communication to residents by the City of Ottawa. He has definitely identified that as a major current failing of City Hall.
Brigitte Pellerin
And the other campaign — not directly about this, but Neil Saravanamuttoo’s promise to open the books within a hundred days — it’s not quite directly addressing this, but it goes to the heart of the problem from a different direction: mainly the secrecy. And — this is not related to St-Laurent — there’s also the big impression a lot of people have in Ottawa, justifiably so if you ask me, that whenever we’re asked for our opinion, decisions have already been made. So there are three big problems. One: our voice, when we’re asked for it, doesn’t really get registered. Two: accountability and secrecy. And three: the communications in this city are just terrible.
Evan Potter
And then the current mayor, Mark Sutcliffe, has himself at times added to that confusion. They’ve had to walk back some messaging. And it’s interesting. When that happens — we saw it with the linger-downtown case — the mayor turns around, blames other people, and says it’s all misinformation.
Brigitte Pellerin
Right. And — that column [Brigitte’s column in the Ottawa Citizen] did finally run, so I hope people enjoyed it. It was when people first started backlashing — we’re not going to stay downtown; what do you mean you want to encourage us to stay downtown? — and he said it was disinformation, because “nobody is suggesting that employers should keep employees at work longer.” Which, again, was at cross purposes: that is not what people were saying. You introduced something — what do you mean, asking employers to keep us at work longer? — and it just went bad from there.
The next column, you should know, is about parking. Because — related to the return-to-office problem — there’s not enough parking downtown for people who need to drive, or prefer to drive. You need to put your car somewhere. But if you only need your car downtown once a week, or every other week, there aren’t enough spaces in the downtown core for people who don’t have a monthly pass. So you park on the street. And if you park on the street downtown — I don’t know if you know this — you have to move your car every hour. This does wonders for your productivity, by the way. Every hour: crap, I’ve got to go move my car.
Evan Potter
I well remember that. Everybody running around.
Brigitte Pellerin
And people miss it, because you have meetings, and you forget — so you wind up with a parking ticket.
Evan Potter
Lots of new yellow parking tickets.
Brigitte Pellerin
So now the city, in response to people saying “enough parking tickets,” has made some real good changes to the parking-ticket system. First of all, they’re going to be yellow, not white — so they’re more visible on your windshield. Okay. Second, the early-bird payment discount period is a little elongated now — I think fifteen days instead of seven to get the discount on your ticket. And a couple of other changes like that. But it’s not actually solving the problem of people having to run outside every fifty-five minutes, get in the car, and drive around downtown looking for a free space — which can take you half an hour each time, and you have to do it every hour.
Instead of planning for the return to office — which, by the way, was not an unpredictable event, we’ve been talking about it for a while — instead of making sure people had reasonable ways to get downtown, park or take transit, be there, and focus on work for eight hours... No. We’re just going to make the tickets yellow now. I’m losing my mind. I’ve got nothing. I would swear right now, but we’re not supposed to.
Evan Potter
No, we’re not supposed to. You shall have words. Well — let me ask you a softball question. I was thinking about this today: without a mayor’s race that is somewhat competitive, would we really have a show, you and I, every week?
Brigitte Pellerin
No. Not like this. This is fun.
Evan Potter
Because most of the incumbent Councillors — almost all of them — are going to be re-elected. Some of them will be acclaimed; I’m pretty sure of it. I don’t know which ones — we can talk in the coming weeks about which will be acclaimed. But basically, this Council will be [almost] exactly the same as the previous Council, and the only competitive contest may be the mayor’s race. And if it were not for Alex Lawson coming in in January, Brigitte, there would be nothing for us to talk about.
Brigitte Pellerin
So we’re happy — that’s what you’re trying to say. Because otherwise it would be a pretty depressing campaign.
Evan Potter
I’m saying we’re thankful to Alex — and I guess to Neil — for coming into the race. Without them, I’m not even sure it’s competitive. It would definitely have changed with Lisa. But yes.
Brigitte Pellerin
We’d be curled up in a ball in a corner, crying. It’d be that bad.
Evan Potter
It would have been: everybody just go home, wake up on October twenty-sixth, go to the polls, re-elect the current Council — and wait for 2030 for a change. I have to tell you, that is not good for local democracy. But these are the structural constraints.
You’re going to visit Neil at one of his events next week?
Brigitte Pellerin
That’s right — I’m going on Tuesday, I believe. And I also got a note from one of the candidates in Stittsville. Stittsville: I want to go check out, because there are what, eight or so people running there, since Glen Gower’s not running anymore? Woo, it’s a party. Get into the clown car and follow everyone.
Evan Potter
More, I think. It’s a party out there — it’s one of the two or three new faces coming to Council.
I went to a Neil event last week. Look — you and I, sitting in there, it’s a total policy discussion, just the way Neil likes it. Totally nerded out.
Brigitte Pellerin
We nerd out. Yeah.
Evan Potter
Nodding our heads: yes, sounds reasonable, sounds good, whatever’s being proposed. And then at the end, Erin, his campaign manager, comes to the podium, thanks everybody — and then they make the point that they need more name recognition for Neil. So they ask everybody in the audience to say his name out loud. Maybe it’ll happen when you go: at the end, everybody says “Saravanamuttoo!” at the same time. It’s fun. But it reminded me that it’s late in the day to be pressing for name recognition when you only have ninety days left.
Brigitte Pellerin
But those are the ninety days that count the most, right? Now is the time.
Evan Potter
Absolutely — they are the ninety days that count. Now’s the time. And you can see how the Saravanamuttoo campaign is methodically going ward to ward, neighbourhood to neighbourhood, making their case.
Brigitte Pellerin
And their videos are pretty good, too — I’m going to put in a good word, communications-wise. His videos are sharp, they’re short; agree with the content or not, you know where he stands, you know what he’s talking about — everything is clear. I’ve not seen any videos from the mayor — maybe they just haven’t made it to my feed. Alex Lawson’s videos have started coming back into my feed; the algorithms are waking up, I guess. He too is good at communicating — getting his points across very well.
Evan Potter
Right. But unfortunately — and you’re familiar with our local media ecology — the challengers cannot get media coverage. It’s just so difficult for them to get that attention, and it hurts them, in name recognition alone. So they have to have a ground game so superior to the Mayor’s that it’s almost an impossible standard, Brigitte. I really do have great sympathy for the challenger campaigns going up against an incumbent.
Brigitte Pellerin
Yeah. And as with every election: anybody who puts their name forward deserves credit for doing so, because it isn’t an easy thing. Sometimes you do it knowing you’re not going to win — and you do it anyway, for the good of democracy. And you know what? That’s a really good thing. Every time I get a chance: thank you for trying. Thank you for doing this. It’s good to engage your neighbours and talk with them — we’re all better for it.
Evan Potter
Otherwise, Brigitte, there would be twenty-one incumbents acclaimed. All the time. That’s no good.
Brigitte Pellerin
That’s no good either. So there we are, trying our best. And I know a lot of the candidates are actually watching this — I hear from them. Feel free to reach out if you want to share some of your information; we’re happy to talk about any of the campaigns.
All right then — the August long weekend is coming up, so I wish you a very good one, a very happy one, not too hot, I hope.
