W13
City of Ottawa — Municipal Council
Rideau–Rockcliffe Ward
Election record, 2000 – 2022 · known as Rideau Ward prior to 2006
2000Rideau Ward
| Candidate | Votes | % |
|---|---|---|
| Jacques Legendre | 7,269 | 64.07 |
| Richard Cannings | 4,077 | 35.93 |
2003Rideau Ward
| Candidate | Votes | % |
|---|---|---|
| Jacques Legendre | 6,070 | 79.17 |
| James Parker | 934 | 12.18 |
| Michel Binda | 663 | 8.65 |
2006Rideau–Rockcliffe Ward
| Candidate | Votes | % |
|---|---|---|
| Jacques Legendre | 7,450 | 62.35 |
| Maurice Lamirande | 1,953 | 16.34 |
| James Parker | 1,248 | 10.44 |
| Jules Bouvier | 1,077 | 9.01 |
| Muinis Ramadan | 221 | 1.85 |
2010Rideau–Rockcliffe Ward
| Candidate | Votes | % |
|---|---|---|
| Peter D. Clark | 2,722 | 25.84 |
| Maurice Lamirande | 1,835 | 17.42 |
| Sheila Perry | 1,709 | 16.22 |
| Bruce Poulin | 1,695 | 16.09 |
| Richard Cannings | 1,333 | 12.65 |
| Corry Burke | 438 | 4.16 |
| Rawlson King | 380 | 3.61 |
| Pierre Maheu | 224 | 2.13 |
| Harley Collison | 129 | 1.22 |
| James Parker | 69 | 0.66 |
2014Rideau–Rockcliffe Ward
| Candidate | Votes | % |
|---|---|---|
| Tobi Nussbaum | 4,846 | 47.19 |
| Peter D. Clark (incumbent) | 1,871 | 18.22 |
| Sheila Perry | 1,423 | 13.86 |
| Penny Thompson | 994 | 9.68 |
| Jevone Nicholas | 846 | 8.24 |
| Cam Holmstrom | 290 | 2.82 |
2018Rideau–Rockcliffe Ward
| Candidate | Votes | % |
|---|---|---|
| Tobi Nussbaum | 7,334 | 80.52 |
| Peter Heyck | 1,774 | 19.48 |
2019Rideau–Rockcliffe Ward
By-election
Triggered by Nussbaum's resignation to lead the National Capital Commission. Seventeen candidates on the ballot.
| Candidate | Votes | % |
|---|---|---|
| Rawlson King | 1,529 | 18.36 |
| Jamie Kwong | 1,406 | 16.88 |
| Penny Thompson | 851 | 10.22 |
| Marc Dorgeville | 794 | 9.53 |
| Sheila Perry | 742 | 8.91 |
| Maurice Lamirande | 708 | 8.50 |
| Johan Hamels | 665 | 7.98 |
| Kasia Adamiec | 507 | 6.09 |
| Chris Penton | 441 | 5.29 |
| Oriana Ngabirano | 247 | 2.97 |
| Patrick Mayangi | 135 | 1.62 |
| Miklos Horvath | 89 | 1.07 |
| Peter Heyck | 58 | 0.70 |
| Peter Jan Karwacki | 48 | 0.58 |
| Jerry Kovacs | 46 | 0.55 |
| Idris Ben-Tahir | 35 | 0.42 |
| Bruce A. Faulkner | 29 | 0.35 |
2022Rideau–Rockcliffe Ward
| Candidate | Votes | % |
|---|---|---|
| Rawlson King | 8,481 | 80.14 |
| Clayton Fitzsimmons | 859 | 8.12 |
| Peter Jan Karwacki | 716 | 6.77 |
| Peter Zanette | 527 | 4.98 |
● denotes winning candidate
Rideau-Rockcliffe (Ward 13) Voter Turnout
Municipal election turnout, last ~25 years — Ottawa, Ontario
| Election | Type | Turnout | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | General election | 39.74% | 11,216 of 28,220 eligible voters — up 2.59 pts from 2018 |
| 2019 | By-election | ~30.6–31% | 17 candidates on the ballot; lower turnout typical of by-elections |
| 2018 | General election | 37.15% | Tobi Nussbaum re-elected with 80% of the vote |
| Election | Citywide Turnout | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 39.92% | — |
| 2010 | ~44% | Down ~10 pts from 2006 |
| 2006 | ~54% | Implied from the 2010 "-10pp" figure |
| 2003 | Not found | Not confirmed in available sources |
| 2000 | Not found | Not confirmed in available sources |
Caveat: Ward-level (rather than citywide) turnout figures for 2000, 2003, 2006, and 2010 weren't readily available in the sources searched. Elections Ottawa's archived poll-by-poll PDF results may have this detail for those years if it's needed.
Vote for Peter Karwacki.
Campaign Web Page
Looking at the ward's electoral record
ReplyDeleteBack to its creation, there's a clear pattern worth understanding for a Ward 13 campaign:
The incumbency cycle repeats almost exactly. Jacques Legendre held the seat from 1994 to 2010, winning by ever-widening margins once established (57.73% in 1994, then 64%, 79%, 62% through the 2000s).
The seat only became competitive again when Legendre didn't run — and even then, Peter D. Clark won the open 2010 race with just 25.84% in a 10-candidate field, a genuine plurality win, not a mandate.
Clark was then dispatched relatively easily in 2014 by Tobi Nussbaum (47.19% to Clark's 18.22%), who proceeded to win 80.52% unopposed-in-practice in 2018.
When Nussbaum left for the NCC, Rawlson King won the 2019 byelection with 18.36% in a 17-candidate field — an even thinner plurality than Clark's — and then, as incumbent, blew out to 80.14% in 2022.
The pattern: open-seat races in this ward fracture badly (10+ candidates splitting the vote, winners taking the seat with 18–26%), but once someone is the incumbent, they consolidate the ward hard, typically into the high 40s to low 80s on re-election, almost regardless of the quality of the challenge.
That's the single most important structural fact for anyone challenging King: unseating an incumbent here from outside has essentially never happened in this ward's modern history except when the incumbent chose not to run.
Every transition (Legendre→Clark, Clark→Nussbaum→King) happened at an open seat, not a contested re-election.
A few other things the data shows:
• The ward leans left of the city as a whole. In 2022, Catherine McKenney (the more progressive mayoral candidate) took 46.18% here versus 37.88% citywide — nearly 9 points stronger than her city average, while Sutcliffe underperformed his citywide number by about 8.5 points. Clive Doucet showed a similar (smaller) over-performance in 2014.
• Turnout in the ward trails the city. 39.74% in 2022 versus 43.79% citywide — a gap that's shown up in most of the last few elections, suggesting real headroom in voter mobilization rather than a ceiling already being tested.
• MY own trajectory across three runs is upward, even against a consolidating incumbent: 3.61% in the fractured 2010 field, 0.58% (last place) in the 17-candidate 2019 byelection, then 6.77% and a clear third-place finish (ahead of Zanette) in 2022 — nearly doubling both vote share and total votes despite running against an incumbent at the height of his post-byelection strength.
Put together, this suggests the more useful frame for 2026 isn't "beat King head-on the way you'd beat an equally-matched challenger" — the ward's history says that's rare — but rather that structural accountability and unseated-incumbent narratives have to do real work, since the ward otherwise defaults hard to whoever's already in the chair.
It also suggests turnout mobilization, not just persuasion, may be underexploited ground given the ward's below-average participation.