Widespread carnage throws chair’s race into disarray

Members of Niagara Region’s ruling cabal are licking their wounds after their disastrous showing in Monday’s municipal election.

But they have at least one reason to chortle among themselves.

Pelham’s Dave Augustyn, the early odds-on favourite to become the next regional chair, was soundly defeated in his bid to return to council.

It would be hard to overestimate how much the cabal detested the Pelham mayor, who was a thorn in its side almost from the get-go.

To make his political life miserable, the cabal orchestrated a regional council campaign that questioned the ability of the town to properly manage its finances. It was an extraordinary and unprecedented Niagara Region intrusion into a local municipality’s affairs.

The charges fizzled, but, given Monday’s widespread electoral carnage in Pelham, there was clearly citizen unhappiness with the way the town’s business was being conducted.

Whether the Region’s pot-stirring played a key role in Augustyn’s political demise — a mayor can accumulate a lot of baggage over 12 years in office — is open to debate.

But not for the cabal. On a night with little to cheer about, members will find considerable consolation in believing they foiled Augustyn’s plans to win the Region’s top job.

And with Augustyn no longer in play, the entire chair selection process has been thrown into disarray.

Excluding the chair, the current council has 30 members. (The incoming one will have 31, with the addition of another West Lincoln representative.)

Of that number, 12 are mayors, 18 are directly elected councillors.

Only three directly elected councillors — St. Catharines’ Brian Heit and Tim Rigby, and Niagara Falls’ Bob Gale — were re-elected to council.

Other than the Region’s inaugural chair, John Campbell, no one has been selected for the job without having first served as a regional councillor. And no sitting mayor has ever successfully sought the position.

Heit, Rigby and Gale seem unlikely candidates for chair.

Heit has never shown such ambition in the past; Rigby is 78 years old and had been ready to retire from politics; Gale is a charter member of the now universally scorned cabal. So, where to go from here?

Two places.

One is Jim Bradley, who easily topped the polls in St. Catharines. The former long-serving MPP and Ontario cabinet minister would be the overwhelming favourite if he wanted the chair’s job. Really, it’s his for the asking.

But he’s 73 and has burned the midnight oil as a provincial politician for more than 40 years.

It’s reasonable to wonder whether at this stage of his life he wants that kind of responsibility and stress. After all, he now has the freedom to attend even more of his numerous beloved sporting events.

Whatever his feelings, you can count on him being pressured to be a candidate.

The other place to look is the roster of mayors.

There’s no rule that says a mayor can’t become chair. But it gets complicated if one does.

He or she would have to step down as mayor, forcing another mayoral election, mere months after the previous one.

I only recall Thorold’s Robin Brock trying to win the job while mayor. She had little support.

What usually happens is that a mayor with regional chair aspirations chooses not to seek re-election as mayor and, instead, runs to become one of his/her municipality’s directly elected regional councillors.

Such a strategy was successful for Niagara-on-the-Lake’s Wilbert Dick and Gary Burroughs; not so much for Welland’s Damian Goulbourne and Pelham’s Augustyn.

Of the mayors who will sit on the next regional council, Fort Erie’s Wayne Redekop comes to mind as someone who might be a popular choice for council’s leader.

This will be his fifth term on council, he’s a bright guy, hasn’t been notably partisan (he did run provincially for the NDP in 2011) and Niagara’s southern tier has never had one of its own serve as chair.

That said, I have no idea whether he has the slightest interest in the job. But the pickings are mighty slim. Too bad no one thought of having a direct election for chair.

Oh well.