The Illusion of a King

 It may come as a surprise but the King was not always unchallengable.

It previous runs for council and school board  he too was soundly beaten

The history of Rideau Rockcliffe is one of unassailable incumbency...except Legendre. See below.

Starting with the great Peter Clark.

Clark was followed by Legendre, then Toby Nussbaum and finally King.

King won in a field of 17 with 1529 of the heavily dilluted votes..many more voted for others than for him. Beautiful but tearful loser Kwong missed out by 123 votes.

On the other hand, as a loser in good company in 2022 my vote count increased by a factor of 15x! From 48 to 716. What will happen in 2026?

So what have been the accomplishments of our local leaders?

King sat on a lot of committees. What came of that? Not much. Is the city less racist?

Compare this feeble 7 years to Jacque Legendre.

Mon Dieu!

Legendre had his problems with police services board too. Instead of quitting like King did, they simply would not have him sitting on ops!

He argued against the now beloved baseball stadium!

He did help get the St. Laurent community center and a new bookmobile.

The superbly qualified Nussbaum was largely sidelined on council and ultimately left/ resigned his seat early for the primo job as ceo of the ncc.

Finally King?

My conclusion is that it is either impossible or extremely difficult to move policy forward wthout being a bit of a pain.

Carol Anne Meighan once admitted it was hard to even get a public garbage can installed.

You will be tolerated or mollified and in the end, don't look for thanks. Only history will be there to judge you.

As challenger I have some specific things in mind.

Most importantly we have to get those 18 wheelers out of downtown. Build the new east end crossing..but start planning now for public crossings, sound barriers, vegetation, signage, over and under passes and traffic policy!

My Other policy planks include 

• Avoiding low cost housing ghettos
• A new public washroom policy
• More physical seperation on bike lanes
• Immediate "at point of water use" lead filtration
• Self driving shuttle PILOT on St. LAURENT
• No pandering and no slush funds
• If elected...I will not run again! No pandering!

This time around vote wisely, vote for Peter Karwacki.