‘WE RAN A TERRIBLE CAMPAIGN’

Lionel Perez, one of the 25 Equipe Coderre candidates to hang on to their seats, took to Facebook to analyze how his party so dramatically ran off the rails to criticize his party’s campaign.

“First, Équipe Denis Coderre pour Montréal (EDCM) ran a terrible campaign,” Perez wrote on Tuesday morning. “Our platform was uninspiring and for the most part limited ourselves to reiterating what our administration had already done or announced — we didn’t articulate a vision of hope for a better tomorrow.

“Our party’s mistake was thinking that because we had an incredible track record (and yes, we did) that such a record would be sufficient to coast across the finish line with the lead. It was a defensive campaign and ultimately the wrong strategy, which ignored the particularity and dynamics of a two-way race where all those opposed to the incumbent can aggregate in a singular ‘anybody but incumbent’ camp.”

Perez also complained about a fundamental lack of organization in his party’s campaign.

“It was unclear to many in caucus who actually was the campaign manager,” he wrote. “Also, we didn’t have a communication director or press attaché until about three days before the start of the campaign and in both cases, it was personnel transferred from the mayor’s office. You can’t run a campaign with people who jump on ship at the last moment. You need planning, foresight and an effective structure — we didn’t have any of that.”

Perez also credited Projet Montréal: “Since they could not beat us on our record, they made it into a referendum on Denis Coderre’s personality instead. The omni-mayor’s greatest asset became his greatest liability. (Projet Montréal) exploited this, and the media were only too happy to play along. (Projet Montréal) tactically outmanoeuvred us, plain and simple.”