Coderre lost his touch with the people
Denis Coderre will return to city hall Wednesday to carry out his final acts as mayor of Montreal.
He will preside over his last executive committee meeting, which will include many members of his team who are now out of jobs. He will begin the transition process to hand power to Valérie Plante, who will be sworn in as Montreal’s mayor on Nov. 16. And he will meet the press to answer questions about his failed quest for a second term. After a two-day hiatus from the public eye, he has no doubt absorbed the stinging blow of losing a job he thought he would keep easily after being bested by a better organized and more positive rival.
But will an introspective Coderre show up to take responsibility for what one of the few surviving members of his inner circle admitted was a “terrible campaign?” Or will a bitter Coderre unleash his wrath on the media, whom he hinted in his concession speech he blames for his defeat?
However he chooses to play it, this will be his swan song at Montreal City Hall. Coderre quit the municipal scene Sunday night, leaving the 25 councillors elected as part of his eponymous team without a leader to marshal the opposition.
But it may well be time to write a political obituary for Coderre, who was class president in kindergarten, told his mother at 12 he wanted to be prime minister, took the Young Liberals by storm in his youth, and was eventually elected to the House of Commons in 1997. He was promoted to cabinet as sports minister, later picked a legal fight with hockey player Shane Doan, and then acted as immigration minister, stickhandling the complex file after 9/11.
A return to federal politics at this juncture seems out of the question. As the Toronto Star’s Chantal Hébert noted, his recent dancing on the grave of the nowscrapped Energy East Pipeline was an unneeded stick in Alberta’s eye that would only pose a political headache for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. And the way Coderre undercut former leader Michael Ignatieff by complaining about the Toronto elite when he quit as Quebec lieutenant left him on the outs with some members of his political family.
Besides, Coderre’s old-school style doesn’t fit with Trudeau’s approach to governing, which gives more prominence to youth, women and minorities, and is predicated on sunny ways. The same generational shift and fresh thinking that swept Coderre out of Montreal City Hall this week blew through Ottawa in 2015.
The Quebec wing of the Liberals might be one option for Coderre. But would his big personality and sizable ego be happy as part of a team in the National Assembly after calling the shots in Montreal? Now, if the leadership were open, which it is not, that might be a different story.
Coderre’s best bet for a soft landing might be with the Montreal business community that backed his candidacy. Coderre is nothing if not a deal-maker. His talent for backslapping, penchant for networking and skills as chief salesman of Montreal during his time as mayor might serve some corporate entity or organization well.
Whether a backroom role would satisfy a public figure accustomed to the spotlight is another question. But he might have to get used to not being the centre of attention.
Coderre’s tendency to make everything about himself played a big role in his loss. It made it that much easier for Projet Montréal to make the race a referendum on him. His decision to run on his record, rather than offer Montrealers a vision for the next four years, like Plante did, also made him seem like yesterday’s man in contrast to her woman of the moment.
But perhaps his biggest mistake was not on the campaign trail, but in how his term in office progressed. For a populist, he lost his touch with the people. The Denis Coderre who attended the funeral of a slain cab driver and took a jackhammer to a Canada Post super-box foundation to defend home mail delivery for frail old ladies eventually gave way to a globe-trotting ambassador for the city who led trade missions and rubbed shoulders with his counterparts from around the world.
This jet-setting itself was not the problem so much as that it caused his priorities to fall out of step with those of ordinary Montrealers — whose support he needed to stay in office.
His insistence on granite tree stumps, the ePrix car race, bringing back a major-league baseball team and the need for a concert venue in Parc Jean Drapeau at the expense of 1,000 mature trees were symptoms of his disconnection as much as his grandiosity.
Like Icarus, Coderre got carried away with his high-flying position. In his case, it wasn’t so much his proximity to the sun but losing sight of the people on the ground that brought him plummeting back to Earth.