By defeating both incumbent Sandra Masters and former councillor Lori Bresciani, mayor-elect Chad Bachynski showed there was an appetite for change.
This isn’t how this was supposed to happen. Both had formidable (or as formidable as it gets in local municipal politics) machines behind them — especially, Bresciani.
Bresciani had one-time high-ranking Saskatchewan Party insider Jason Wall heading up her campaign. Hmmm?
Well, the veteran Hawkins — who was often the face of the city’s catalyst committee and its big projects and the most vocal councillor in opposition to the CNIB-Brandt monstrosity proposed for Wascana Centre — was defeated by George Tsiklis.
Tsiklis was thought to have had the approval from Advance Regina … not to mention a few high-ranking Saskatchewan Party government and federal Conservatives supporting his campaign. Hmmm?
There also seems little doubt the billboard campaign contributed to the demise of Masters, who finished a disappointing third.
“For the most part, I just tried to ignore them … but I think, perhaps, they worked,” said Masters, as reported by the StarPhoenix’s Julia Peterson.
But the outgoing Regina mayor noticed something else in the air Wednesday night:
“People voted for change pretty much across the board. I think we’ll have one, maybe two, returning councillors. I think it’s indicative of some of the other things we’ve seen in the city and even across North America, so to speak. (And) we knew the vote was going to be split. We knew the numbers were going to be split.”
This was true, but maybe it wasn’t exactly the change Advance Regina and other secretive individuals were trying to orchestrate.
In all, four of six members re-seeking a council seat of some sort were defeated, including Terina Nelson (arguably, the incumbent closest to all the council dysfunction who strangely wasn’t included in Advance Regina’s campaign. Hmmm?
In addition, former councillor Jerry Flegel, who was looking to rejoin the ranks, lost his race.
However, Mancinelli did hang on, along with fellow incumbent Shanon Zachidniak.
It will be a rather green Regina city council, but voters did elect an interesting mix of more business-friendly councillors Dan Rashovich, Clark Bezo and Tsiklis and progressives like Sarah Turnbull, David Froh, Victoria Flores, Mark Burton, Shobna Radons and Zachidniak.
This doesn’t quite seem to be the “change” Advance Regina and Common Sense Regina was looking for.
So perhaps the real lesson Wednesday night is Regina voters seem rather capable of deciding on their own who they thought was contributing to the dysfunction and who wasn’t. They hardly needed help from those fresh “grassroots, common sense” groups that smelled more like phoney Astroturf than fresh cut grass.
Regina voters saw for themselves the dysfunctional overreach of the last council on major projects like the new library, thoughts of a new arena and ball field and the new aquatic facility to replace the Lawson Aquatic Centre that Bresciani tried to distance herself from in the end.
Maybe voters wanted new voices, but they also seemed to want practical ones.
It’s surely worth noting that Bachynski beat two members of the former council. And he did so on a campaign of practical ideas like doing road repairs and a campaign that seemed removed from the vested interest groups. Hmmm?
And it’s surely worth noting that the slate of RCAAN candidates for public school board trustees pushing the anti-LGBTQ2S+ policies in schools all went down in flames. (Remember former education minister Jeremy Cockrill who a year ago shepherded through ridiculous Bill 137, the pronoun consent law, saying if people wanted such change they should run for school board? Hmmm?)
Well, Regina voters did want change.
But they wanted to figure out themselves what that change was supposed to look like.
It wasn’t a great night for incumbents, but it also wasn’t a great night for those eager to manipulate voters.
Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.
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