FREDERICTON – To start, I cannot say I am a disinterested observer in the Fredericton municipal election. I have expressed through social media my preferences for several candidates at the council and mayoral level – including Cindy Miles (Ward 12), Misty McLaughlin (Ward 11), Leah Levac (Ward 10), and Matthew Hayes (Mayor). I even (very briefly) considered a run in Ward 9 (Hill Area/O’Dell Park) myself. As an op-ed columnist, I do not see any commentator as being truly neutral, however I will try my best to give an objective observation of the municipal race in Fredericton.
Not all wards in the city are contested. However, and maybe this is the effect of following the race on Twitter, there seems to be a unique buzz around this race unlike other years, with Ward 10 having 5 candidates, incumbent councillor Tony Whalen declining to re-offer (possibly) because of challenges from former mayor Sandy DiGiacinto and Greg Ericsson in Ward 8, and Cindy Miles – a formidable campaigner – running to unseat incumbent David Kelly in Ward 12.
Other candidates, such as Ian LeTourneau, Kate Rogers, Misty McLaughlin, Leah Levac, and others, have garnered significant interest in their campaigns.
This municipal election is also seeing a greater emphasis at the ward and mayoral level on ideas and policy – with issues such as democratic accountability – through meeting and consulting with constituents – and sustainable urban development coming to the forefront in political debate.
Brad Woodside is the longest serving mayor in Fredericton’s history, having been mayor from 1986 to 1999 and again from 2004 to the present. Most – including even many of Woodside’s opponents – concede that he has been an effective mayor on many fronts, promoting the development of a strong IT sector in the city and being a strong advocate on issues such as preservation of civil service jobs – an important sector in the city – to the provincial government.
Woodside has fended off many challengers in the many elections he has run as mayor – some challengers strong, some weak. This has contributed to the (possibly true?) belief that Woodside is unbeatable, the Hazel McCallion of Fredericton who can retain the Mayor’s office as long as he wishes.
Though some observers would challenge the assertion of Woodside’s unbeatability, enter Woodside’s challenger, Saint Thomas University professor Matthew Hayes.
Hayes is running a campaign emphasizing ideas and policy – one can draw analogies to Naheed Nenshi’s campaign in Calgary – emphasizing issues such as democratic accountability, more effective mass transit, and planning policies that favour walkable downtown-like developments over box-store style sprawl.
Even if Hayes forces Woodside’s hand on policy – and one can posit that the vote on council on banning shale gas is an effect of Hayes’s campaign – he can claim victory.
But Hayes is ultimately running to win. He is a much more formidable political strategist than many may have initially expected – articulate and politically savvy. He has been holding campaign events, and his campaign signs are visible throughout the city.
But then, Woodside has won election after election at the municipal level. He has a reptutation for administrative competance. While Hayes is likely to be a much stronger challenger to Woodside than Tim Andrew was in 2008, Hayes’s path to victory is still a steep one.
The ultimate question, will voters think Woodside has been in office too long and its time for new ideas? Regardless of the outcome, the mayor and council races in Fredericton promise to be some of the most interesting ones we have seen in a while.
Photo by Martin Cathrae
Hassan Arif is a columnist with the Telegraph Journal in New Brunswick. He is a PhD candidate in urban sociology at the University of New Brunswick and has a background in law and political science. He can be reached at arif.telegraphjournal@gmail.
2 comments
If anyone can positively change Fredericton, it is Hayes.
Fredericton has been growing rapidly the past few years, and our municipal government (while far from perfect) has made some modest efforts to incorporate a few modern, intelligent urban planning principles into the development. That said, the people in charge at city hall seem content to allow most of that growth to occur with little serious long-term planning for things like large traffic increases, necessary transit access, infrastructure maintenance costs, environmental concerns, and potential social costs that arise when these and other needs aren’t sufficiently met.
Shorter story, Brad Woodside has been reasonably competent (though some of his social views in the 1990s were absolutely outrageous), but his leadership in steering Fredericton toward building sustainable, clean, accessible, person-centered (as opposed to car-centered) neighbourhoods has been lacking. Fredericton is doing well, but it has the potential to be even better than what it is – I feel like voting for Woodside would be akin to choosing to rest on our laurels, revelling in what we already have rather than aspiring to our full potential.
Hayes has been talking about things that haven’t been brought up by candidates in Fredericton elections for a while. Past challengers to Woodside have often been little more than grievance candidates with a grab-bag of complaints, but Hayes actually has a goal for the city in mind other than “to become the mayor of it.” He certainly gives the impression that he has the grey matter to be more than a town-crank complaint candidate.
A denser core only makes sense for the long-term health of the city center, and for that matter, for the city itself. Curbing the uncontrolled asphalt-and-strip-mall bonanza that’s cropping up at the fringes of our city, drawing dollars away from local businesses and requiring an expensive expansion of infrastructure into low value-by-density areas, is going to have to happen eventually. Why not get to addressing the issue sooner, rather than resting on our laurels until we’re forced to deal with it?
…It looks like typed way more than I intended to. I guess I just have a lot of passion about the outcome of this race, as a young person weighing the pros and cons of staying in the city I grew up in, and desperately hoping that my fellow Frederictonians are as passionate about the future of this city as I am…