MONTREAL – A prominent politician has bowed out of Montreal’s mayoral race.
Louise Harel says she will run only for a seat on council.
The leader of the main opposition party at city hall says she will back a coalition candidate – Marcel Cote, an economist believed to have support from different parties.
Harel essentially admitted that she couldn’t penetrate the electorate in the western – mostly English-speaking – half of the city.
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A former Parti Quebecois cabinet minister and staunch sovereigntist, Harel had drawn the ire of many suburban Montrealers when she was the municipal affairs minister who created the merged mega-city more than a decade ago.
In response to criticism at the time, she singled out the wealthy suburb of Westmount over what she called “its anglo-British character, its old stench of colonialism.”
That may have left her unelectable in a city-wide race.
Not only did Harel lose the 2009 vote to the scandal-plagued party of Gerald Tremblay, a former provincial Liberal minister, recent polls place her far behind Denis Coderre, a former federal Liberal.
The move to recruit Cote is seen as an attempt to block Coderre.
The former federal immigration minister is the current front-runner to win the November election. The victor will become Montreal’s fourth mayor in just over a year, following an interim one and two others who quit in scandal.
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