In Montreal’s mayoral race, personality may outshine policy

Montreal mayor Denis Coderre says he doesn’t want the city’s upcoming municipal election to be a referendum on his personality, but it’s not clear if Montrealers will agree.

The race to lead Canada’s second-biggest city pits Coderre, a former federal Liberal cabinet minister and one-time mayor, against the woman who defeated him in 2017, incumbent Mayor Valérie Plante. And with the two well-known candidates running neck and neck in recent polls, observers say personality may matter more than policy.

“It’s a campaign of personalities,” Danielle Pilette, a professor at Université du Québec à Montréal who studies municipal governance, said in a recent interview. While Montreal has a party system at city hall, most of the focus — for both major parties — is on the mayoral candidates, she added.

Good mayors generally get two terms, Pilette said, and Plante and Coderre see themselves as competent mayors who deserve another mandate.

She said Coderre believes he lost in 2017 because he ran a bad campaign and had a few missteps in office, including championing an unpopular electric car race known as Formula E. Plante cancelled subsequent races in the city when she took over, calling the event a “financial fiasco.”

Plante said she would rather talk about policy than personality. “Some people might say that the campaign is about a personality fight, but I refuse that,” she said at the launch of her party’s campaign platform on Oct. 6. “Projet Montréal has always been about ideas. It’s in our DNA: having ambitions for the city.”

Coderre, meanwhile, has run a campaign that has often taken a negative tone. He has said the city is dirty, comparing Montreal to Beirut after the Lebanese civil war.

Pilette said Coderre’s current campaign reminds her more of 2017, when he struggled to define himself against Plante, as opposed to 2013, when he became mayor.

Montrealers head to the polls Nov. 7.