FORTIER JOINS RACE
Third candidate for mayor
He’s not exactly Emmanuel Macron, the young, dynamic outsider who beat out the old-guard establishment candidates to win the French presidency with a centrist message.
But Jean Fortier’s entry into Montreal’s mayoral race Wednesday certainly changes the dynamic of what until now has been a two-person contest pitting incumbent Denis Coderre against Projet Montréal opposition leader Valérie Plante.
Similar to Macron, Fortier wants to offer a third option to Montreal voters who find themselves frustrated with Coderre’s seat-of-his-pants management style, but unsure about embracing Plante’s progressive agenda.
And like Macron, Fortier wants to upend a partisan system by putting his name on the ballot for Coalition Montréal, a party being billed as more of a “movement,” after its founder, well-respected businessman Marcel Côté died suddenly, and many of its original backers drifted away.
But unlike Macron, Fortier is not so much a fresh face on the municipal scene as a blast from the past. He served as chairman of Montreal’s executive committee under former mayor Pierre Bourque, representing Vision Montreal before quitting city hall in disgust at what he later described as attempts by real estate developers to bribe him.
Fortier, at his launch press conference, shrugged off the Macron comparisons.
“I’m not an impressionist,” he joked.
But Fortier was vague about his political credo and what he would do in office, except to say the party — sorry, movement — would be presenting the planks of a platform in due course.
“It doesn’t matter whether I stand for the left or the right,” he said. “The quality of a leader is being able to see in the people around him what they can offer.”
It was Marvin Rotrand, the city councillor for Snowdon and the official leader of Coalition Montréal even though he’s not seeking the mayoralty, who kept mentioning Macron. And it’s Rotrand who has been heading up the (belated) charge to cobble together an alternative to the Coderre-or-Plante conundrum.
Going door-to-door in Côtedes-Neiges, Rotrand says he hears a lot of angst from voters who aren’t impressed with Coderre’s record, but have reservations about Plante — or rather what’s perceived as Projet Montréal’s “leftist” policies. Rotrand believes that without a third choice, many of those voters who are in the middle of the political spectrum will stay home or hold their noses and reluctantly vote for Coderre, assuring him a second term.
The veteran city councillor is so sure of his analysis, he went as far as to predict on Wednesday that the first election polls will show Fortier running in second place.
“We think from our polling, that we’re actually in the game,” Rotrand said.
That remains to be seen. Coderre is a populist with a winning track record from his days as an MP and cabinet minister for the federal Liberals. And Plante has been campaigning hard all summer, rolling out platform ideas almost daily, and shaking hands in Tim Hortons far from the urban core where her roots are.
A third contender paves the way for vote splitting. Fortier’s candidacy actually lowers the number of votes needed for any one candidate to clinch victory in a winner-take-all mayoral contest, potentially laying out an easier path to office.
Rotrand explained Coalition Montréal and Fortier aren’t necessarily expecting to take power. They’d be happy holding the balance of power on council, so they can rein in Montreal’s party system and make it more like Toronto, where the mayor must secure the votes of the 44 independent councillors through negotiation and compromise.
Still, if the goal is to take enough council seats to deprive either Équipe Denis Coderre or Projet Montréal of a majority, that looks like a long shot at the present moment.
Coalition Montréal has a full slate of candidates in Côte-des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, but only a smattering so far elsewhere, with one so far nominated in the Plateau and another in Ahuntsic. Rotrand said more will be announced soon in other districts, like Outremont and Hochelaga-Maisonneuve. But that’s still only a handful of the 65 council seats.
The movement will have to count on the backing of other non-aligned or independent councillors or members of parties whose fortunes have faded.
Interestingly, Fortier backed Mélanie Joly in 2013. Joly came out of nowhere to finish a surprise second in the mayoral race and the vestiges of her Vrai Changement party still hold seven council seats.
Laurent Blanchard — a longtime Vision Montréal councillor in Mercier-Hochelaga Maisonneuve who served briefly as caretaker mayor of Montreal when Gérald Tremblay and his replacement Michael Applebaum both resigned in disgrace — sat beside Fortier at the press conference Wednesday. Blanchard ran under the Coalition banner in the last election, but was defeated by Projet Montréal.
Côté, for all his accomplishments, placed a distant fourth last time around. Will the same promises of sound management and pragmatic decision-making — that failed to resonate then — catch on under Fortier, with no Joly to share the anti-Coderre and anti-Projet vote with?
By transforming the 2017 campaign into a three-way race, Coalition Montréal could end up playing spoiler — for someone.