Jim Beis holds onto borough mayor seat
Denis Coderre was swept from office by Valérie Plante on Sunday, but Pierrefonds-Roxboro voters bucked the trend taking place in other boroughs of Montreal by electing a full slate of Team Coderre candidates.
Jim Beis, who sat on Coderre’s powerful executive committee at city hall, was re-elected as borough mayor for a second term.
Beis collected 7,939 votes (46 per cent), while runner-up Hélène Dupont of Projet Montréal garnered 5,746 votes (33.3 per cent).
Justine McIntyre, leader of the Vrai Changement pour Montréal party, placed third with 3,550 votes (20.6 per cent). Beis said he was sad to see Coderre voted out of office after one term as mayor.
“For me it was more emotional than unhappiness. (Coderre) is the reason we were able to accomplish so much in Montreal,” Beis said.
“All of us, collectively, did such a phenomenal job. I think we made such a huge difference. And to have that result following such an exceptional four years — to me, I don’t have an answer. I don’t really understand it because that’s not the response and the feedback that I was getting on the ground.” Beis praised Coderre as a leader. “He’s a great, great man. I have the highest respect and admiration for somebody like him. He was able to transform a city that was in the gutter, really. And he was able to get it to a standing that we’ve never seen in who knows how long. To me, that’s admirable. It takes a lot of guts to do that and he was able to accomplish that with all of us.
“The only thing I can think of is all those emotional issues that we were hearing on a constant basis, whether it was the Formula E (car race) or whatever. Is it really the reason why we’d change a mayor of that calibre who is that important to a metropolis city managing a $5-billion budget?
“I never believed those issues, if that’s what it was, would contribute to his demise. Not only his, but so many other candidates who did remarkable work in their own communities. So it was shocking to me to see some of those results.”
Team Coderre candidates swept all four other elected councillor positions in Pierrefonds-Roxboro.
Benoit Langevin won the city council seat in Bois-de-Liesse district, while Louise Leroux took the borough seat.
In the Cap St-Jacques district, Team Coderre’s Catherine Clément-Talbot and Yves Gignac were re-elected to their respective city and borough councillor seats.
Voter participation was low in Pierrefonds-Roxboro. Only 36.4 per cent of eligible voters cast a ballot for borough mayor. Slightly more than a third of eligible voters bothered to vote for their local councillors.