MEEHAN’S LEARNING CURVE
New councillor needs ‘thicker skin’
Councillor-elect Carol Anne Meehan needs to grow a thicker skin. And she knows it.
There’s still a little over a month before Meehan will be sworn in as the new councillor for Gloucester-South Nepean, and already the veteran broadcaster is in the midst of her first social-media firestorm.
This week, Meehan was accused of making a threat in an online squabble with a resident on a Facebook page over transit issues. The contretemps turned personal, and the resident said Meehan didn’t take the bus “so what does she care?”
Meehan’s response to this provocation seemed incongruous with the kind-tempered television anchor who was the face of the 6 p.m. news for 26 years. Meehan told her critic that she would “go find you ... I would love to have a face-toface because you certainly like to slam me here. Let’s see what kind of guts you have. I have the guts and the courage to succeed YOU will never have.”
The posts have been deleted, but a repentant Meehan later posted an apology on the Riverside South Community Association Facebook page, saying she felt harassed and realized that she “responded in a way that was overly aggressive.
“I am going to have to grow a thicker skin,” she said.
In an interview Tuesday, a tearful Meehan acknowledged that as a political neophyte, she made a mistake, but she said she has learned from it. She pledged to move on and not to engage on social media with those who are “sniping from the shadows.”
“I fell into a big trap. I should never have responded at all of those people. I used the wrong language. I should have said, ‘Meet me in person,’” said Meehan. “I have always been able to figure things out if I sit down and talk to people.”
Bruce Lindsay, president of the Riverside South Community Association, says there has been a lot of chatter about the exchange, but he is willing to give Meehan the benefit of the doubt.
“She shouldn’t have said what she said. She’s someone starting out in political life. It’s a one-off, I hope,” he said.
Meehan is, in fact, known as one of the nicest people in the city, a mainstay of community events for almost three decades, from fundraisers to the Santa Claus parade. And she wears her heart on her sleeve. Meehan wiped tears from her eyes on-air the night her coanchor, Max Keeping, retired.
The low points in her life have been just as public. In January 2012, the body of her husband, Greg Etue, was found in a parked van about two hours west of Ottawa two weeks after he was reported missing. Etue had multiple sclerosis and had been battling cancer for two years. Condolences came from people who had never even met the couple.
In November 2015, Meehan was unceremoniously laid off from her position as anchor only weeks after Keeping’s death. An online protest petition protesting her departure attracted about 20,000 signatures. Exactly two years after she was dumped by CTV, she left her afternoon slot on radio station 1310 News.
Last week, Meehan, who had never voiced political ambition before this election, wrested Gloucester-South Nepean away from incumbent Michael Qaqish after a tight race. Meehan said she was glad that she had found a new path in her life.
“If you visualize something for yourself, you find yourself on the path to it,” she said in an interview last week.
Meehan’s profile — her face has graced dozens of bus ads — probably gave her campaign a boost. But her warm, accessible personality took it from there, says Mike Patton, a veteran campaign manager who volunteered in Meehan’s campaign.
“She connects better than any politician I have ever seen with people at the door. It’s hard to fake that,” he said. “People would answer the door and say, ‘Holy cow! It’s Carol Anne!’”
But that kind of recognition will only get you so far, Patton said. “Before she started knocking on the door, there was some dissatisfaction with the incumbent.”
Meehan said that over the years she has been asked by many if she was interested in politics, but she preferred being on the other side of the table, asking the questions. She has publicly acknowledged that she didn’t think she was suited to the combative world of politics.
“I wish more women could go for it. I really, really do. But I don’t know. It’s like a battle zone in there,” she said in an interview with the Ottawa Citizen in 2005. “I don’t know how thick my skin would be. I haven’t got a lot of patience. And I like to get things done fast. I just don’t like dithering. I think I’d be frustrated.”
What changed her mind? Meehan said she realized that if she didn’t run, Qaqish would win the ward uncontested.
“My goal was to give him a good race,” she said. “I just thought, Why not? What is the worst thing that could happen?
“It wasn’t a great leap to knock on doors and talk to people.”
Meehan grew up in Pembroke, the oldest of five girls in a family that loved watching the 6 p.m. news. A teacher encouraged the shy girl to try public speaking. “It changed my life, gave me confidence,” she said.
She graduated from Ryerson University, and worked at CHRO television in Pembroke, then in Sudbury, Edmonton and Calgary. In 1988, she interviewed for the job as the news anchor at CJOH. But the job went to someone else, and Meehan took another position in Calgary. A few months later, she got a call from CJOH to ask if she was still interested in the anchor job.
“The first night I sat down next to Max it was like I had been there for a long time. We just clicked.”
Former colleague Kathie Donovan notes that Meehan and Keeping were the perfect balance. “She was self-deprecating and let him take the spotlight.”
Meehan’s ability to relate to people will be her most valuable attribute in politics, said Donovan. “The more people know about our struggles, the easier it is to connect with them.”
Meehan has lived in her home on the Rideau River near Manotick for 26 years. She can recall when it was possible for her to wrap up the newscast at 7 p.m. and be in Manotick for curling half an hour later. The roads in the growing suburban area are now choked with cars, and congestion is a sore point with residents. “I watched the community grow and grow. I was not always happy with the decisions they made.”
When Patton first sat down with Meehan and asked her about her political ambitions, she said she had none. That is a rare and powerful thing, he said.
“She said she was doing it for the community. ‘If people are unhappy with me, they won’t re-elect me. I’ll move on.’ She’s looking for the best deal for the community and not to compromise. She doesn’t have a long list of people to whom she owes favours. She doesn’t owe any developer anything. She doesn’t owe anybody anything except for the people who voted for her.”
Patton was the communications director for former mayor Larry O’Brien. Engaging with difficult people and those who disagree is part of a councillor’s job, he said. “You have to engage with people even if they’re unpleasant. Even if they’re a jerk, they still need to have their street plowed.”
As for that thick skin, it takes time to grow. Meehan counts Nepean’s Progressive Conservative MPP Lisa MacLeod as one of her few political friends.
That will help, said Patton, who has worked on MacLeod’s campaigns.
“She has a skin as thick as a rhinoceros,” he said of MacLeod. “She can give Carol Anne advice on that sort of thing.”