Tank: Elections suggest Saskatoon shifted left, but has it?

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Shortly after the right-wing Saskatchewan Party was nearly wiped off the map in Saskatoon, the city’s voters elected a mayor who represents a perceived extension of Charlie Clark’s left-leaning legacy.

Mayor Cynthia Block became the city’s first female mayor with a convincing victory this month over former Saskatchewan Party cabinet minister Gord Wyant and former mayor Don Atchison.

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Block lacks Clark’s NDP connections — although former Saskatoon NDP MLAs helped her fundraising campaign  — but she uses very similar language, stressing the need for inclusion and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.

And, amid a barrage of campaign attacks on city hall spending, Block defended property tax hikes of six per cent this year and 5.6 per cent next year as responsible fiscal management despite an affordability crisis.

So it’s worth asking whether Block’s election marks a permanent left turn for Saskatoon, where the Saskatchewan Party has dominated the electoral landscape for a decade.

Long-serving mayors like Atchison, Henry Dayday and Cliff Wright were generally considered centre-right politically, bereft of overt partisan affiliations — until Dayday ran for the federal Liberals before getting the boot as mayor.

Clark seemed to change that with a distinctly progressive bent. His campaign manager Michelle Beveridge, who became his chief of staff for his eight years in office, was a director for the left-wing think tank the Broadbent Institute.

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When Clark won a convincing re-election campaign four years ago, it seemed to signal that Saskatoon’s priorities had changed. The city appeared to have evolved from a place concerned principally about property tax increases and maintaining a business-friendly environment.

Yet most voters opted for a candidate other than Clark when he first won in 2016 with 41 per cent of the vote (in a field of four candidates) and in 2020, when he improved to 47 per cent over five other candidates.

Block earned 44 per cent of the vote in this month’s election. And, as with Clark, most voters chose another candidate, although Saskatoon’s new mayor got a larger share than Clark in 2016 and Atchison in his first election 21 years ago (30 per cent).

But Block may have benefitted from running the strongest campaign, too. She boasts perhaps the best communication ability of any recent Saskatoon mayor, which was honed during her career as a broadcast journalist and CTV anchor.

Her principle challengers also faced serious hurdles. Wyant was trying to become the first Saskatoon mayor to have served previously as an elected official in a higher level of government.

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Accordingly, Wyant tried to distance himself from the provincial government he helped lead, striving to position himself as a centrist.

Atchison, meanwhile, appealed to the more conservative suburban voters with his claim that far more money from a provincial agency is helping to defray the costs of recycling collection for apartments and townhouses than for single-family homes.

Some right-wingers will blame Atchison for splitting the conservative vote like he did in 2020 when another former provincial cabinet minister, Rob Norris, finished a distant second to Clark.

But of the eight Saskatoon civic elections held this century, only two (2009 and 2012) featured a real two-way race.

As for the council Block will lead, it looks likely to lean further right than its predecessor. Right-leaning incumbents Troy Davies and Randy Donauer easily won their re-election bids and Bev Dubois was acclaimed.

Coun. Zach Jeffries, who was also acclaimed, may consider himself a progressive, but he frequently votes with Davies, Donauer and Dubois.

Newly elected councillors like Kathryn MacDonald (Ward 1), Holly Kelleher (Ward 7) and Scott Ford (Ward 8) bring varied business backgrounds to their new roles, so it’s reasonable to expect a fiscally conservative outlook.

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And, while Baptist pastor Robert Pearce may prove tough to define ideologically, he’s certain to tack further right than David Kirton, who he replaces in Ward 3.

Block seems unlikely to benefit from the same degree of political kinship Clark had with departed councillors Sarina Gersher, Hilary Gough, Kirton and Mairin Loewen. Efforts to explore mayoral campaigns for Gough and Loewen and/or recruit them reportedly failed.

Block, who ran for the federal Liberals in 2015, has vowed to conduct herself in a non-partisan matter. She only gets one vote, so we’ll soon see whether a distinct political bent takes shape on this new council.

Phil Tank is the digital opinion editor at the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.

ptank@postmedia.com

twitter.com/thinktankSK

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