Davies: Election season

The summer heat has firmly moved in to West Carleton and it’s a time when news is moved to the backburner while the community’s attention drifts elsewhere.

Most of West Carleton Online’s summer coverage revolves around sharing details on upcoming events, then attending said events, and then providing coverage about what happened at them.

But this summer is a wee bit different. It’s a summer in an election year. While that distinction hasn’t moved the story to the front page of the community’s conscious yet, it is certainly percolating on the back burner, ready to boil over as soon as fall hits.

And for Ward 5, the Oct. 26 municipal election will be unlike any before. If you haven’t been paying attention yet, there are already a million interesting storylines to pay attention to. Let’s discuss.

First, there is a legitimate mayoral candidate from West Carleton.

No offense to 2022 mayoral candidate Graham MacDonald who spent time living in West Carleton but did not live in West Carleton at the time of his election bid, he was never going to make much of an impact in that outcome.

Dunrobin’s Alex Lawson, on the other hand, has a very strong team managing his campaign, and has already made waves early in his campaign. While Lawson has never been a politician before, he did spend many years as an executive member of the Conservative riding association. He also has former Prime Minister Stephen Harper campaign members on his team including campaign manager Emrys Graefe.

In polling at the end of June, Lawson was in third place behind the incumbent Mayor Mark Sutcliffe and current Coun. Jeff Leiper. Not bad for someone considered an unknown.

The good news is Lawson is showing he has the ability to climb. Team Lawson says their internal polling shows Lawson is second choice for a huge percentage of voters who prefer a different candidate first.

Lawson’s internal polling says 75 per cent of Leiper’s supporters are considering voting for Lawson; 78 per cent of Neil Saravanamuttoo’s supporters are considering voting for Lawson; and 52 per cent of undecided voters are leaning toward Lawson.

That is good news for Lawson, but don’t forget just how hard it is for an unknown to make a dent in any election. It’s very hard to knock off an incumbent. He’s got a lot of space to make up, but it’s going to be fun to watch him try.

Can you imagine if Lawson is successful? Instead of listening to the last several mayors tell us how often they come out to visit West Carleton (my inlaws live in Kinburn!), we will know this mayor comes home to Dunrobin every night.  

More interesting than the mayor’s race is West Carleton-March Ward’s.

As of today (July 9), it’s a two-horse race. Carp’s Christine Harrison was the first out of the gate filing her papers on Day 1 (May 1) and Coun. Clarke Kelly officially launched his re-election bid less than a week later (May 6).

We don’t expect the Ward 5 race to remain at two for the duration, but anyone else thinking of entering as a Ward 5 council candidate, better have a strong plan.

This race has absolutely nothing in common with the 2022 municipal election campaign. In 2022, there were six candidates all vying to replace former councillor Eli El-Chantiry who served for 19 years and was retiring from politics.

If you spoke to all six candidates, attended all the all-candidate debates, and have covered municipal politics for rough 25 years (as I have), you knew none of them really knew what they were talking about. None of them really knew what Ottawa City Hall was like. None of them really knew what they would, or would not, be able to do from the councillor’s seat.

It was six rookies talking through their hats with pie in the sky aspirations about what they would achieve if elected.

During the last election, there was only one candidate I had ever heard of before they declared to run in the election and that was Greg Patacairk who was a long-serving Dunrobin Community Association president and an integral community leader during the recovery from the 2018 tornado.

This election, the two current candidates are very well known to West Carleton Online and me.

Obviously, over the last four years I have met Clarke Kelly countless times. I have interviewed with him dozens and dozens of times and covered him, his actions and his moves even more. I’ve attended almost every meeting he’s hosted in West Carleton, several of his Agriculture and Rural Affairs committee meetings and a handful of his council meetings. Covering Ward 5 politics is West Carleton Online’s bread and butter after all.

The same can be said for candidate Christine Harrison. While I haven’t known her as long as Kelly, as a local businesswoman and community leader, I have met her and spoken with her many times over the last several years, starting when West Carleton Online profiled her business early in 2024. We later profiled her career as the founder of the Women’s Community of Body Building (WCBB); the first association in Canada dedicated to women’s bodybuilding. She’s a volunteer board member of Carp Health Access (CHA). Roughly a year ago she came on board with West Carleton Online as a volunteer columnist writing about mental health issues from a local perspective.

We like both these candidates very much. And they will both make the 2026 election much more interesting, and much more competitive than 2022.

Kelly was the most polished candidate of all the unknowns in 2022. At the all-candidates meetings he didn’t make grandiose promises other than promising to listen and to protect the rural character of Ward 5. Let’s not forget, one candidate promised to bring OC Transpo bus stops to every Highway 417 overpass that runs through West Carleton. Kelly was measured and the best speaker when all the candidates were together on the same stage.

As everyone knows and Kelly has already admitted, being the incumbent, especially a rural one, is a huge advantage. The only close election El-Chantiry ran in (out of five), was his first one when he narrowly defeated retired teacher Dunrobin’s Adele Muldoon by 29 votes. The next four he won by thousands of votes.

One of the disadvantages of being the incumbent is you also have a record to be judged by. Every politician (and human) knows you can’t make everyone happy all the time. And there have been some contentious files during his first term. Probably the most polarizing file is the Battery Energy Storage System partially under construction on Marchurst Road.

Those opposed to the project, a battle that lasted years, were very vocal and Coun. Kelly fought by their side very early in to the project. But there were more in the community in favour of the project than the opposition would have you believe. Despite the opposition’s very vocal fight, the project has basically been approved. Will that be an issue that sways the election or becomes a focal point of the campaign? Time will tell.

Harrison might be the toughest competition for an incumbent we’ve seen in Ward 5 since amalgamation. She’s a smart, successful businesswoman with an excellent track record of altruism.

Perhaps even more important, she has a very strong team behind her. Powerhouse communications professional Jennifer Stewart, CEO of Carp’s Syntax Strategic, is providing assistance in Harrison’s campaign (to what extent, we’re not sure). Syntax Strategic is a public relations firm that has run more than a few election campaigns including helping Mayor Mark Sutcliffe in the last election.

For a political rookie, having that kind of experience to draw from is critical to success. While Kelly and his team have the advantage of learning from his first campaign – what worked and what didn’t – Harrison will also have that experience that no candidate had in 2022.

Most new candidates, especially in rural or small municipalities, pretty much have to run their campaigns by themselves. They have no experience to draw from and are basically learning from what they see in the public-facing elements of previous campaigns and their own inexperienced gut instincts.

I can tell you from covering every municipal election in Ottawa and/or the Ottawa Valley over the last 23 years, the number of times I saw a rookie council candidate attend a council meeting in their own municipality before the election is embarrassingly small.

Can you imagine, standing in front of a large group of voters, and telling them exactly what you are going to do when you get to the council table, and you haven’t even once attended a council meeting to see how it actually works?

As a voter, it’s our job to pay attention. City of Ottawa councillors are responsible for a $7.1 billion budget in 2026. And for most of you, that’s thousands of your own dollars. We have  a real competitive race in West Carleton this year and I’m excited to see what happens over the coming months.

I will re-share this nugget long-serving Admaston-Bromley mayor Raye Anne Briscoe told me more than a couple times when I covered municipal politics in Renfrew County about voters – “even when they’re wrong, they’re right.”

We would love to hear from you on the 2026 municipal election scheduled for Oct. 26. Please share below (or in the form of a Letter to the Editor). But please keep in mind, we will not publish comments that attack a candidate or shares unfounded information. Save that for your Facebook page.

Top 10 stories since March 16

As is tradition here at West Carleton Online the last Indubitably monthly column was published in mid-March. So, here are our Top 10 most clicked on stories since that time. To see all Indubitable columns written by West Carleton Online publisher Jake Davies, click here.

Between March 16 and July 9, we’ve had 213,009 pageviews from 61,479 unique visitors. Those are crazy numbers and we are always excited to share them with our advertisers. Having said that, we would love to see our subscribers increase, so please, if you enjoy West Carleton Online and local community journalism (remember, many community’s around you no longer have community journalism – I live in Arnprior and I have almost no idea what’s going on in the municipal election there), let your friends and neighbours know.

For our Top 10 stories, we are going to avoid other pages that have done well, such as our Carp Fair Drive-In Bingo event listing which has 1,163 pageviews since March 16, but are not news stories. Here we go:

1. Lapensee gets life sentence for 2023 murder of Rose Kerwin (published May 8, 854 pageviews): A very tragic and disturbing story involving some very dark people.
2. Carp’s Harrison enters Ward 5 race (published May 1, 735 pageviews): For regular readers of Indubitably, you know I learn about the Top 10 list at pretty much the exact same time as you. See above for thoughts on the election.
3. Police briefs: OPS adds 34 to force, Fatal Russell fire under investigation, Mississippi Mills youth charged with assaulting family (published May 15, 672 pageviews): There’s always at least one Police briefs in the list, even if the stories don’t directly affect West Carleton.
4. Edgewood golf course to close after season (published May 3, 587 pageviews): It’s on the edge right now, we’ll see what happens.
5. Guilty verdicts for two involved in 2023 Kerwin murder (Published March 27, 492 pageviews): Kerwin’s body was found in the sleepy community of Pakenham, and it’s one that deeply affected our readers, obviously.
6. Police briefs: Fatal Dunrobin Road ATV crash, Ongoing tow truck enforcement, Missing Beaverbrook girl (published April 9, 491 pageviews): Police briefs number two.
7. Friday night Ferry Road barn fire (published March 21, 475 pageviews): There was a follow-up fundraising story too.
8. Mayor says ‘no easy answers’ to flooding (published April 23, 465 pageviews): So, the mayor does come out to West Carleton.
9. Police briefs: Police seek witnesses to Old Carp Road crash, Retail theft pilot creating results, Murder charge in Konokhova disappearance (published June 26, 430 pageviews): Police briefs number three. We prefer when the Top 10 list is full of local profiles, community events and local issues – but we don’t choose the Top 10, you do.
10. Village Pizza Carp branching out to Dunrobin (published April 10, 427 pageviews): That’s more like it, and 11 through 18 are all local stories as well, on topics such as ALTO, Dunrobin solar project, injured Dunrobin child, Ward 5 grass fire, development growth maps and Meristem massage.