Defeated for the second time, Denis Coderre says he leaves politics

Article content

Defeated for the second time in his bid to win mayor of Montreal, Denis Coderre announced on Friday that he is leaving politics.

Article content

The announcement came after a meeting with the Ensemble Montréal caucus and five days after incumbent Valérie Plante roundly defeated it in Sunday’s municipal elections.

Speaking to reporters outside the House of Italy in Montreal, Coderre said four decades in politics at the federal and municipal levels were enough.

“Forty years in public life, 12 election campaigns, 16 years in Ottawa, (as) mayor we contributed to the rebirth of Montreal, as you will recall,” Coderre, surrounded by members of his party’s caucus, told reporters. “At the end of the line … I leave with a sense of mission accomplished.”

As Coderre spoke, Ensemble Montréal issued a statement announcing that Coderre would not exercise the option to assume the council position won by his co-listener, Chantal Rossi, and would sit as leader of the opposition in city hall.

Article content

The party also announced that it had begun organizing an election for a new Ensemble Montreal leader and that details would be made public “in the coming weeks.”

Among those flanking Coderre as he spoke to reporters was Jim Beis, who was re-elected as mayor of the city of Pierrefonds-Roxboro last weekend and is one of the Ensemble Montréal members rumored to be a potential candidate for compete for party leadership. Another is Alan DeSousa, who won his re-election as mayor of the city of St-Laurent.

Lionel Perez, Côte-des-Neiges City Councilor, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce District, served as Acting Leader of Ensemble Montréal for the last four years of the last term. Pérez resigned from his district this fall to run for mayor of the municipality. However, he lost to Projet Montréal’s Gracia Kasoki Katahwa, who was declared the winner on Monday by a 212-vote margin over Pérez.

Article content

Côte-des-Neiges – Notre-Dame-de-Grâce is one of the places where Ensemble Montréal is rumored to be considering a recount request in the municipal mayoral race. The deadline for filing vote recount requests at the Quebec Court ends Monday.

Coderre had been out of sight for the four days after his defeat and Ensemble Montréal was once again relegated to a minority position on the city council, with 23 out of 65 seats on the city council. That fueled speculation that, as he did after his defeat to Plante in 2017, he would resign his seat as leader of the opposition in the city council and leave politics.

“After the disappointing results last Sunday, I had to reflect on my future and make an appropriate decision before speaking to the caucus,” Coderre said, citing the statement. The meeting with his group lasted two hours, Coderre told reporters.

Article content

“There was always a part of me that wanted to come back, and when I saw the way the city was run, I decided to leave,” he said of his reasons for coming back for a rematch with Plante this year. “It had the feeling of an unfinished work.”

While Coderre started this year’s election campaign with a double-digit lead over Plante, that lead had turned into a draw when the campaign officially began in September. He was behind Plante by as much as five points in the week before voting day.

In the days after Coderre’s loss, many observers, some of them allegedly within his own party, blamed the drop in polls and subsequent defeat in part on Coderre’s initial refusal to provide details of his consulting work. and clients between 2017 and his decision to seek mayor.