#548 - Lessons from PQ

 When voters sentiment swings, it swings hard, it swings real hard.

While this is unlikely in RideauRockcliffe the fact that there are only two candidates, there is a defining issue, there is general dissatisfaction and frustration with the status quo, there are two very different candidates with very difference skill sets and experience gives voters a clear choice.

Should the incumbent win again it will not be because they were not given a good alternative.

The setup in Rideau-Rockcliffe (Ward 13) is a classic two-candidate municipal race, and the structural points  listed are accurate and on the public record.

Rawlson King has held the seat since the 2019 by-election and was re-elected in 2022 with roughly 80–83 percent of the vote against a field that included Peter J. Karwacki. In 2026 the ballot is again only those two: King seeking a third term, Karwacki (project manager / hospital administrator / data analyst background) running again. Election day is 26 October. 2022 turnout in the ward was about 40 percent.

I have framed the Eastern Bridge / East End Crossing (the federally driven interprovincial proposal along the Aviation Parkway–Kettle Island corridor) as the defining local file. My argument is that a flat municipal “no” surrenders leverage on design protections—truck routing, noise, transit lanes, hospital access—because the project is federal, already has pre-construction spending attached, and a city councillor cannot veto it. King has a longer record of opposition or delay motions on the crossing, citing limited diversion of truck traffic from King Edward and community impacts; his campaign materials emphasize housing, ward infrastructure investment, and equity across a socio-economically mixed ward (Overbrook through Rockcliffe Park and Wateridge).

That produces the contrast: different professional skill sets, a binary choice, and one high-visibility infrastructure disagreement that is hard to blur. Whether “general dissatisfaction with the status quo” is broad enough to move the needle is the open variable. 

Incumbency advantages in low-turnout municipal races are usually sticky; the 2022 margin was large, and nothing in the public coverage so far shows a polling swing of the scale that would overturn it. Hard swings do happen when a single issue crystallizes and turnout shifts, but they are the exception, not the baseline, especially against an incumbent who already cleared 80 percent.

If King wins again, the mechanical claim holds: voters were offered a different candidate with a different stance on the bridge file and a different résumé. 

The size of any margin will indicate how many of them treated that as a sufficient reason to switch.

Personally, this calculus is irrelevant. Winning was never the sole objective. The point was to provide the public space for debating municipal issues in the ward. There was no acclamation as there was in two other Ottawa wards. The incumbent has had to work for his victory.

Rideau Rockcliffe will truly deserve the councillor they get and the results they have been promised for which they have voted.