WARD 10 RACE TAKES SHAPE
Challengers to test incumbency in bid for city council
“Will you give me your support?” It’s almost three months before the Oct. 22 municipal election, but Ward 10 candidate Jim Morrison was asking voters on McKay Avenue that question this week.
He came within 197 votes of winner Paul Borrelli in the last election in 2014 — after registering late and with only his wife to help.
This time, now retired from his job as a bank manager, he’s been knocking on doors four hours a day for several weeks. He’s hit 600 homes so far.
“I’m going to get to the whole ward,” he said.
The first of three planned mail drops has been sent — 4,500 cards with information about him and a survey for residents. He has 20 volunteers so far and has raised more than $6,000 — most unsolicited and more than he spent the entire campaign last time.
His campaign manager is veteran Conservative organizer Paul Synnott, who ran Borrelli’s campaign last time but has publicly opposed him after Borrelli campaigned for an auditor general then voted against one. Morrison is already identifying supporters.
Borrelli, a retired teacher, won with 1,661 votes. Morrison’s goal is 2,000.
He wants more votes than Borrelli at every poll. He’s already helped arrange a proxy for two supporters who will be away during the election.
“If it’s going to be neck and neck, I’ve got to get every vote,” he said.
He won 41 per cent of the vote at the poll at Budimir Public Library, where he canvassed this week. He’s hitting that early to make sure people remember him and build on that support. He’ll hit it again closer to election day to get out his vote. His slogan? “Ward 10 Deserves Better.”
Ouch.
It’s a reference to the controversial Borrelli, who couldn’t be reached Friday for a phone interview, and his predecessor, Al Maghnieh, who was defeated after charging more than $8,400 in personal expenses to a libraryissued credit card. He later repaid the money.
Ward 10 is one of four key wards because the vote was so close last time and because Borrelli is seen as vulnerable. He was criticized for his flip-flop on the auditor general and for touting Pelissier Street as a “catalyst for a vibrant downtown” and then voting to replace storefronts on the ground floor of the parking garage there with more parking. He’s known for saying things like, “Campaigning is campaigning, reality is reality” and advocating riding bicycles on sidewalks. He also lives in Ward 9.
Ward 10 is important to Mayor Drew Dilkens because Borrelli has been one of his supporters on a split council.
But it’s an odd ward with a lot of different dynamics. Near the centre of the city, it shares boundaries with six other wards and reaches into the west end, South Windsor and Remington Park.
There are neighbourhoods of older, mostly white residents, but the demographics are changing. It’s one of the fastest growing wards and one of the youngest, with 27 per cent of residents under age 19, according to Know Your Ward, the blog by local political observer Frazier Fathers.
Many of the newcomers are young and ethnically diverse. There are also low-income and high-income neighbourhoods. Ward 10 has one of the highest voter turnouts in the city at 42.77 per cent. Voters threw out Maghnieh, who was a promising new voice until the scandal. How will they judge Borrelli? While some are trying to revive the call for an auditor general, the issue seems dead. And how many in Ward 10 care about storefronts in a downtown parking garage? Some people might even agree with riding bikes on sidewalks because they don’t feel safe on roads.
The real issue, most candidates agree, is infrastructure — traffic at Dominion Boulevard and Northwood Street, the narrow underpass with no sidewalks or bike lanes on Dougall Avenue, parking around the busy Windsor Mosque.
Voter Bert Scheyen wants the awkward intersection at Dougall and Ouellette Place, a top intersection for accidents, fixed. “Members of my family have been rear-ended there,” he told Morrison. “Somebody is going to lose their life.”
On some streets, every home has also flooded.
While the city is completing expert studies and spending record amounts on infrastructure, the problems remain, and residents are frustrated.
All this will test of the power of incumbency.
Morrison was seen as a favourite, but eight candidates are running, including two of the other top four finishers in the last election — Mohamed Chams and Wally Chafchak. A traffic engineer, Sadiq Pirani, and sewer expert, Windsor Electric Eel owner Mike Patterson, are also running. So is the former longtime general manager of Roseland Golf and Curling Club, Mark Masanovich, who lives across the street from Morrison. The other candidate is Olivia Ashak, a 46-year-old housewife with a small decorating business. Voters who want change could split their votes among the seven challengers, allowing Borrelli to be re-elected. Patterson said if he doesn’t have enough support by mid- September, and it appears that Borrelli and Morrison are close, he’ll consider supporting one of them. But he doesn’t know which one. He’s not satisfied with Borrelli, “but I don’t know Jim Morrison well enough yet,” he said.
Then there are the young, ethnic voters. Will they vote for older, white candidates like Borrelli and Morrison? Morrison has attended two open houses at Windsor Mosque and is working with two members of the mosque.
“But it is a challenge,” he said. Morrison doesn’t promise voters anything. He tells them he’ll work hard. He warns that fixing the roads and sewers will cost a lot of money.
For now, “they seem to respect that,” he said.
If it’s going to be neck-and-neck, I’ve got to get every vote.