I certainly hope that the strategies used by Donald Trump in the United States and Doug Ford in Ontario do not influence any of the 54 people who are vying for positions on the Greater Sudbury City Council as mayor and/or council in the municipal election on Oct. 22.
Unfortunately, I can already detect some evidence of “Trumford” politics being used by some of the candidates.
We all knew that there was going to be a great deal of opposition to the incumbent mayor and councillors by the anti-casino and the anti-Kingsway groups.
Right from the time the decision was made to select the Kingsway as the site for the new arena/event centre on June 27, 2017, lobby groups vowed to do everything in their power to stop the Kingsway Entertainment District (KED) and delay everything until they could elect a new council to overturn the decision.
And so, it is not surprising to see that many of the 10 candidates who are running against Mayor Brian Bigger and many of the candidates for ward councillor positions have made it perfectly clear that they are against either the arena/event centre being built on the Kingsway or they are against the Gateway Casino being built as part of the Kingsway Entertainment District.
If they can stop either project, they feel they can stop the KED. So this election may be more of a referendum on the KED than anything else.
What is disturbing to me is that a number of candidates are already resorting to the kind of “Trumford” campaigning . They are making false or misleading statements that are intended to undermine the credibility of the current mayor and city council.
This focus on attacking their opponents instead of presenting their own merits is exactly what Donald Trump and Doug Ford did during their campaigns, and remarkably, they both were elected as president of the U.S. and premier of Ontario respectively.
I that some of the municipal candidates may try the same tactic of running down opponents in an attempt to hide their own lack of experience or qualifications from voters.
The general public tends to focus on the negative rather than the positive, and so people may be convinced to vote “against” a person who is constantly run down rather than “for” another candidate who is doing the attacking. The aggressor generally wins in that case.
Some of the local candidates are using any media forum they can to spread fake news and manipulate the truth. Voters are understandably finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish between what is true and what is fake news.
Some candidates are counting on this confusion to stimulate a level of distrust among voters which will erode public confidence in the incumbents.
This may then result in successfully electing an unofficial “slate” of candidates who will then be able to reverse the decisions for the KED and the downtown developments that have been made by the current council.
The candidates hope that by continually making outrageous insinuations that have no compelling, objective basis, eventually people will believe them and build up enough anger to vote “against” the incumbent mayor and councillors.
With less than two-and-half months to go before voters start sending in their online ballots, I sincerely hope that candidates voluntarily stop this “Trumford” style of campaigning.
The City of Greater Sudbury is the largest city by population north of Canada’s Wonderland. Residents deserve a campaign which will enable them to engage in discussions about all of the issues in order to make informed choices about who they feel is most qualified to lead us into the next four years.
Residents do not need to be subjected to a campaign filled with false and misleading statements that will leave everyone totally confused and bewildered. They do not need to be put through a campaign filled with personal attacks. This is an important election as we continue to move forward with the transformational projects that have been initiated. Let’s hope we will soon see an end to the “Trumford” style of campaigning.
However, if this does continue, I remain committed to doing whatever I can to make sure that local residents are provided with the fact-based truth.
This style of campaigning may have worked for Trump and it may have worked for Ford, but it is not going to work in the Greater Sudbury municipal election if I have anything to do with it.
Bob Kirwan
