Plante scores a two-for-one victory

Newcomer becomes mayor of city — and of borough with gripe against ePrix route

In the rivalry for mayor of Montreal, the stakes are highest for VilleMarie borough, where the winner gets both the city and borough.

Valérie Plante became the first woman elected mayor of Montreal in the city’s 375-year history. That means she’s mayor of Ville-Marie, and in a borough of widespread discontent, her party got the majority of the votes in two of three electoral districts — including the one previously held by Richard Bergeron, who led Projet Montréal through three general elections and then joined Mayor Denis Coderre’s executive committee and later his party.

Ville-Marie had hosted the controversial ePrix electric car race that generated protests from residents of the Centre-Sud neighbourhood for the disruption to traffic, businesses and residents. Coderre had signed a contract to have the ePrix run in the Gay Village for the next three years; Plante said she’d relocate it to Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve on Île-Notre-Dame, where the Canadian Grand Prix is staged.

One peculiarity of the borough is its rags-to-riches population. It encompasses the downtown business district, the upscale mansions of the Golden Square Mile, Old Montreal and the Gay Village, as well as safe-injection sites, homeless shelters and mobile food trucks for the less fortunate.

Many targeted Coderre’s $40-million tab to light the Jacques Cartier Bridge as a waste of public funds.

Montreal’s election system allows a defeated mayoral candidate to take a seat as a city councillor — providing his or her co-candidate wins their election bid. Coderre’s running mate in Montreal North, Chantal Rossi, won.

In Ste-Marie district, Plante’s running mate, Sophie Mauzerolle, who has worked for the city as a public policy analyst, got 67 per cent of the vote with 52 of 54 polls counted. Instead of a stand-in, Mauzerolle will get a seat, having easily defeated Pierre Mainville of Équipe Denis Coderre, who served on Montreal city council from 2005 to 2013, first as a member of Vision Montréal, then as a member of Projet Montréal, later as an independent.

The third candidate with a running mate was mayoralty latecomer Jean Fortier, who dropped his mayoral bid, throwing his support behind Plante. Fortier’s co-lister was John Symon in the Peter-McGill district. However, this district, which is short on family services, schools, green spaces and social housing, was taken by Cathy Wong of Équipe Denis Coderre with 47 per cent of the vote and 50 of 53 polls counted. Jabiz Sharifian of Projet Montréal came in second, incumbent Steve Shanahan of Vrai changement pour Montréal in third and Fortier/Symon in fourth.

Shanahan, who ran unsuccessfully for the Conservative Party in the federal election two years ago, finished a distant third in this council race. Wong has a solid reputation as a youth-development officer with the YMCAs of Québec, president of the Conseil des Montréalaises and a columnist with Le Devoir newspaper.

In the St-Jacques electoral district, Bergeron lost to Robert Beaudry of Projet Montréal, who has worked in social development for more than a decade.

Beaudry got 52 per cent of the vote with 59 of 63 polls counted. Bergeron received 46 per cent of the vote, and for the first time since 2005 will not have a seat on Montreal city council.