By Neala Barton
Knock. Knock. That’s a sound you might hear more often until Nov.13, as candidates running for city council tap on your door. They want your vote and, to get it, they’re going to offer you exactly what they think you want: change.
“I should change my name to Change. Vote for Change,” says Luc Lapointe, one of two candidates trying to push Diane Holmes out of her stronghold in the Somerset ward.
Change. It’s a word that has become almost synonymous with election.
Even the councillors running for re-election are using it. But try not to get too many ideas – they still want you to vote the same way you did last time.
And you probably will, if the results of the last election are any indication of Ottawa’s openness to trying something new.
Those who marked an ‘x’ on municipal ballots in 2003 did not shake the foundations of the city. On the contrary, they voted for what they already had. Every single one of the 16 incumbents who ran for re-election that year won back his or her seat, most by big majorities. Three of them were acclaimed. In total, the election brought only six new faces to city council, all of them in wards where the incumbent decided not to run again.
So, if the city wants change, why keep voting for the same politicians?
“It’s better the devil you know than the devil you don’t,” theorizes current candidate for council Gary Ludington. “I think it’s really inherent on people running against an incumbent to go out and inform voters.”
Still, sometimes the incumbent has no opposition because potential adversaries see no point in taking them on.
Jan Harder, arguably one of the city’s most controversial councillors, had no opponent until the end of August, when Catherine Gardner left the race in Bay Ward to run against her in Barrhaven Ward.
If acclaimed, Gardner says Harder would have been left unaccountable. She would not have any questions to answer or all-candidate debates to attend.
She suggests it was Harder’s power as an incumbent that sent would-be candidates packing.
“Some people say, ‘well, Jan’s in there, you can’t beat her.’”
Gardner is going to try, though. She just has one small obstacle to overcome: the average voter likely doesn’t know who she is, or what she plans to do.
When it comes to municipal elections, informing voters is no small feat.
“Often I think people don’t even realize there’s an election,” says political science professor Murray Cooke. Even if they do, he says it’s hard for low-profile municipal candidates to make their views known.
Unlike their federal and provincial counterparts, these candidates don’t have the luxury of a party platform; they can’t offer voters easily identifiable ‘red’, ‘blue’, and ‘orange’ options. Municipal candidates are, on the surface at least, differentiated only by their names. They then have to somehow make voters associate those names with their individual ideas and intentions, to give meaning to street corners burgeoning with “vote-for-me” signs.
To top it off, most candidates are running on shoestring budgets, receive little media attention and face a form of voter apathy Canadian Idol contestants couldn’t begin to comprehend.
In Ottawa’s last election merely 33 per cent of all eligible residents showed up at the polls. Of all the wards in the city, Somerset had the lowest response: only 25 per cent of people living in the area marked a ballot – not exactly the overwhelming cry for change some candidates hope voters want.
“Even though they don’t vote, they talk about [change] a lot,” says Somerset Ward incumbent Diane Holmes, who was re-elected in 2003 and hopes history will repeat itself on Nov. 13.
“In Ottawa, for whatever reason, we’re not opening our eyes to what has been done or what could be done,” says Lapointe, a businessman with a 12-year involvement in city politics. “It’s pathetic.”
Lapointe says he knows running against Holmes puts him at a disadvantage. As the incumbent, she has scores of contacts with community organizations, easier access to funding, and voters who already recognize her name. He says it would likely be a much different election if all the candidates were equally unknown.
Lapointe has only to head next door to the Kitchissippi ward to see that scenario play out. There, after two terms in office, incumbent Shawn Little recently decided he wouldn’t seek a third, leaving an empty seat for his four former opponents to fight over.
“I’ve been out [campaigning] since the second week of June, and I was doing that because I saw Shawn Little as the person to beat,” says Gary Ludington, who lost to Little in the last election and started campaigning early to ensure it wouldn’t happen again.
But now, he says, having no well-known names on the Kitchissippi ballot has changed the race. For him and his fellow candidates, the election is suddenly about more than just trying to usher the incumbent out of office – it’s about who has the best qualifications and ideas.
This time, there is no battle of old versus new. Kitchissippi voters have an opportunity to get to know some fresh faces and make an educated decision.
There is no incumbent to serve as a pinch hitter.
That means those informed Kitchissippi voters – the ones who actually get acquainted with their ‘unknown’ candidates and trek the few blocks to the polls – will pack a lot of power in their little poll-booth pencils.
They are going to be marking an ‘x’ for change, whether they want it or not.
Other wards should be so lucky.