Saskatoon’s first woman mayor will lead a city council with six new members; she cited trying to address homelessness as her top priority.
Cynthia Block launched her successful campaign to become Saskatoon’s first woman mayor in June in her bright, crowded downtown campaign office.
A few hours later, Gord Wyant launched his mayoral campaign in a darker venue in the Riversdale neighbourhood. Rain had started to fall outside. If the dour Wyant cracked a smile during his entire campaign, it was barely perceptible.
Saskatoon voters overwhelmingly chose Block’s bright vision over Wyant’s dark one.
The vote broke down in a very similar way as it did four years ago. Just as outgoing Mayor Charlie Clark finished well ahead of the six-candidate pack, Block captured 45 per cent of the vote, compared to 30 per cent for Wyant.
Wyant performed slightly better than fellow former Saskatchewan Party cabinet minister Rob Norris (26 per cent) did four years ago. So maybe it’s time to end the former-cabinet-minister-running-for-mayor experiment.
This election, he made a silly assertion about an alleged city hall plot to replace the Confederation Mall with a transit village and promoted a questionable scheme to house homeless people in 3D-printed trailers.
City hall critic Cary Tarasoff, who spent four years posting videos blasting Clark and council, managed nine per cent, double his share in 2020.
Wyant denied any connection to the website, which spent thousands (perhaps tens of thousands) of dollars on Facebook ads and portable billboards.
His campaign manager, Samantha Yaholnitsky, admitted she worked for the shadowy group prior to the campaign. And Wyant regularly repeated claims made by the Facebook group.
Block, a former broadcast journalist and CTV anchor who had served two terms as a councillor, did criticize misinformation during the campaign.
Those falsehoods included claims by both Atchison and Wyant’s campaign that city hall was running deficits, even though both should know — Wyant is a former Saskatoon councillor — that deficits are prohibited at the municipal level.
That monumental challenge with a mostly new council will sorely test her positivity. Block turned 60 this summer, but she looks 10 or maybe 20 years younger. She will need her seemingly boundless energy in her new role.
Trying to move that improbable $1.2-billion plan forward represents another big challenge for Saskatoon’s 34th mayor.
Phil Tank is the digital opinion editor at the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.
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