After a long and arduous civic campaign, defeated mayoral challenger Judy Wasylycia-Leis has finally pencilled in some “me-time.”

“The first thing I’m going to do is unpack my boxes from Ottawa,” the former NDP MP said. “Then I’m going to get my house together and pull my carrots out of the garden.”

The relative calm of domestic chores may be just what the doctor ordered after mayor Sam Katz was decisively re-elected on Wednesday, Oct. 27, winning 55 per cent of the popular vote compared to the 43 per cent garnered by Wasylycia Leis.

“I made the decision to come back to Winnipeg to rebuild this community and I’ll be active no matter what on that front,” Wasylycia-Leis said, adding that her disappointment and frustration over Katz’s re-election has been augmented by the results of individual ward races.

“We haven’t been able to consolidate progressive forces,” she said. With all 11 incumbents returning to city council and three of the four wide-open wards won by right leaning or centrist candidates, the mayor will be working with a council that continues to be divisively split along left/right ideological lines.

“I don’t think the policy direction will change (with this council),” said Chris Adams, vice-president at Probe Research and an adjunct professor at the University of Winnipeg.

“I think the opposition (to the mayor’s policies) was weak before and a weak opposition on council will remain.”

A weak opposition signifies that the mayor can not only rely on the six members of the Executive Policy Committee to vote with him on council, but can count on the votes of two other like-minded councillors needed for a majority on the civic body.

With the election of all 11 incumbents as well as right-leaning councillors Paula Havixbreck in Charleswood-Tuxedo and Thomas Steen in Elmwood-East Kildonan, Katz will likely have all the votes needed to pass all bylaws and initiatives through council.

“ I made the decision to come back to Winnipeg to rebuild this community and I’ll be active no matter what on that front.

Judy Wasylycia-Leis

“We weren’t able to connect to citizens with a progressive agenda,” said Shaun Loney, co-chair of the Winnipeg Citizens Coalition, an organization centred on left-leaning political engagement.

The only unpredictable element that could swing council to the left or right is Devi Sharma in Old Kildonan, who has publicly voiced her political independence.

However, Sharma ultimately represents a traditionally conservative ward and was the executive assistant to former councillor Mike O’Shaughnessy, a strong conservative incumbent.

“We have a mayor and council that will feel that they have another mandate to sign (on to bad deals like Veolia),” Loney said.

Unlike the highly socially-democratic Loney, council candidates like Jenny Motkaluk, a centrist in Mynarski who lost to NDP-backed Ross Eadie, find ideological affiliations and party politics stifling.

“I didn’t try and develop an image of myself as a right-wing candidate even though that’s how I was portrayed,” she said, adding that business development and police presence are quite simply desperately needed to aid the problems of poverty and crime in the ward.

“I was very surprised at how polarized city politics are in Winnipeg.”

For an interview discussing civic politics with former mayor Glen Murray, log on to Ethan Cabel’s Nov. 6 blog entry here.

Published in Volume 65, Number 10 of The Uniter (November 4, 2010)