Candidates and collaborators of Ensemble Montreal point the finger at Denis Coderre and significant communication difficulties within the campaign team to explain the defeat.
In a series of interviews with Press made since Sunday’s scathing loss, several have described the controversy over Mr. Coderre’s consulting contracts as the Waterloo of the campaign.
“It was Denis Coderre’s defeat that pulled me down,” said Hadrien Parizeau, star candidate of Ensemble Montreal in Ahuntsic-Cartierville, in a message to Press. “I don’t take it personally. […] We spit in our hands and start again. »The other interlocutors of Press refused to be identified, fearing repercussions on their professional life.
Mr. Parizeau is particularly blunt in his analysis of Sunday’s results.
But behind the scenes, campaign collaborators actually point to the decisions of the leader of Ensemble Montreal – and particularly his handling of the controversy over private contracts – as a factor in the defeat.
Three collaborators indicated that it was from that moment that they understood that Mr. Coderre would not be able to take over Montreal City Hall. ” Up to Everybody talks about it, it was [coude à coude] One of them said.
Until then, Denis Coderre was trying to campaign primarily on security, an issue identified as extremely important for Montrealers in a study commissioned from the firm Ad Hoc, according to our information. The document revealed that housing was also at the top of the list, but Ensemble Montreal determined that Valérie Plante had already monopolized this issue.
The “security” game plan did not hold: on Sunday, October 31, Denis Coderre was compared to Donald Trump by host Guy A. Lepage for his refusal to publish his tax returns. In the days that followed, he revealed the sum of his income, before the press lifted the veil on the identity of his clients, including a major real estate developer.
“People were scattered”
Furthermore, Press was able to confirm that the campaign staff was not physically assembled day after day in one place for the last few weeks, as is usually the case. Some of them were in the party office, at the corner of Boulevard Crémazie and Avenue Christophe-Colomb, while others were in a rented room near downtown Montreal. Virtual meetings were the norm at Ensemble Montreal, unlike Projet Montreal, whose staff was concentrated in an office on René-Lévesque Boulevard East. “People were scattered,” said one participant. “There was an issue of cohesion and communication. ”
Communications were indeed difficult, according to several witnesses, and harmony did not reign between those responsible. “A problem of ego and lack of leadership,” diagnoses a collaborator with experience in another level of government. “The organization made no sense. ”
However, two sources pointed out that beyond the internal tensions at Ensemble Montreal, it is the very low participation rate that mainly explains the defeat of Denis Coderre. Several peripheral and multi-ethnic neighborhoods – often more favorable to Mr. Coderre – recorded a high abstention rate, while more than 40% of voters in Plateau-Mont-Royal, Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie and Mercier – Hochelaga -Maisonneuve spoke.