Tight race for Coderre’s executive pick in Ahuntsic
Early results show Projet Montréal’s Thuillier with a slight lead over Chitilian
Campaigning close to Denis Coderre might have cost Harout Chitilian in his pursuit to serve as borough mayor in Ahuntsic– Cartierville.
With roughly one-fifth of polling stations reporting in the northern borough, Projet Montréal’s Émilie Thuillier held a three-percentagepoint lead over Chitilian, a young politician who has served as city councillor in the past and who was brought to the forefront of Coderre’s campaign during its final week. The lead represented a difference of only 248 votes.
Thuillier has also previously sat as a city councillor. Chitilian easily won as city councillor in 2013. And only months before that election, in June 2013, he almost become interim mayor of the city of Montreal when he lost a council vote by only two votes to Laurent Blanchard.
Chitilian announced he would run as borough mayor in August after Pierre Gagnier announced his retirement from politics at age
81. Gagnier ran under the Team Coderre banner in the last election and won despite a relatively close three-way race in which Projet Montréal finished second.
Thuillier, a founding member of Projet Montréal, has proved her popularity in the Ahuntsic electoral district as she won her second election for the city council seat in 2009 by almost twice the percentage of her two closest opponents.
Chitilian’s profile rose suddenly and significantly in the last week of this election as Coderre announced, if he is elected, he would be the head of the city’s executive committee. Later in the week, on Friday, Chitilian took centre stage while he and another vicepresident of the city’s executive committee, Anie Samson, held a news conference where they questioned how much Valérie Plante’s campaign promises would cost Montreal. They calculated only seven of Projet Montréal’s promises would add up to $800 million annually in the city’s recurrent costs.
SAINT–LAURENT
With early results in from polling stations in Saint-Laurent, incumbent Alan DeSousa, running with Team Coderre, appeared to be headed to an easy victory over Projet Montréal’s Nora Chénier-Jones. With just under one-fifth of polling stations reporting, the longtime Saint-Laurent politician had 70 per cent of votes compared with nearly 30 per cent for Chénier-Jones.
In 2013, DeSousa, who has served as an elected official in Saint-Laurent long before it was fused with Montreal, won the election for borough mayor by a wide margin. He took more than 53 per cent of the vote, while his closest competitor, a candidate who ran for Mélanie Joly’s party, finished a distant second with more than 28 per cent of the vote.
Chénier-Jones, who owns Vida Sana, a gym for families in Outremont, also resides in Outremont. During the campaign she found herself having to explain to local media and Radio-Canada why she was running to be mayor of a borough in which she doesn’t live.
MONTREAL NORTH
In Montreal North, Équipe Denis Coderre’s Christine Black also appeared to be coasting to victory, based on very early results. Black held a 33-percentage-point lead over Projet’s Balarama Holness, a teacher and former CFL football player who played with the Alouettes in 2010 and 2011.
Voters in Montreal North only had 19 months to size up how Black performed as mayor of that borough. Last year, a snap election had to be called after the previous mayor, Gilles Déguire, resigned after he was charged with having sexually assaulted a minor. Black won the April 24, 2016, election easily, capturing almost 69 per cent of the vote.
The Projet Montréal candidate who ran last year also finished a distant second with 23 per cent of the vote.