Lansdowne’s The Big Mayoral Test: BENN

09/27/2025

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Is the upcoming Lansdowne 2.0 vote a litmus test for next year’s mayoral election?

A couple of months ago, Kitchissippi Councillor Jeff Leiper announced that he was considering whether he would run for mayor in the 2026 municipal election. Since that announcement Leiper has been far more vocal in presenting his alternative view to municipal policy than he has been in the past … alternative to the position espoused by current Mayor Mark Sutcliffe. Positions beyond his role as a ward councillor. Positions on matters outside those of the planning committee that he chairs. He appears to be testing the water with more than just his big toe.

Sutcliffe is vulnerable. The mayor has not delivered on his promise to fix the LRT. He has not honoured his promised that the so-called war on cars will wane. Both of those are hot topics for the residents of the wards outside the Greenbelt. Add to that the residents with daily one-way commutes of more than an hour-and-a-half. Wards whose councillors regularly support him at council. Wards who overwhelmingly supported Sutcliffe in the 2022 vote.

Winning the mayor’s office is but the first step in being an effective mayor. Effective requires getting council to support his winning election platform. Ensuring that a majority of the councillors regularly support his platform.

A review of this council term shows that Leiper is part of an eight- or nine-member bloc on council. This bloc is generally comprised of councillors from inside the Greenbelt. There are another three to four councillors for wards inside the Greenbelt who are more often than not on the other side of the vote than Leiper. As for regular support from the councillors representing wards outside the Greenbelt? Somewhere between nil and none except by exception.

Here is the problem. Elementary school arithmetic tells us that he needs 12 of the 24 councillors to regularly support his initiatives with his vote as mayor being the tie-breaker. For the last 11 years Leiper has frequently been on the short end of the vote. How effective would he be as mayor without a majority of the council on side? One-term-wonder Larry O’Brien comes to mind.

Which is where Lansdowne comes in. Leiper has made it clear that he is opposed to Lansdowne. Can he and his supporters convince four or five of the 15 councillors who have not taken a public position against Lansdowne? What if he can’t convince a third of the wavering councillors on Lansdowne into supporting his cause? This is a city project that is so flawed that Ernst & Young, a highly reputed public accounting firm, called the financial projections optimistic (the public accounting tern for fanciful). This is a proposed project that the city’s auditor general declared to understate the expected capital cost by about 20 per cent, and the operating forecast as, well, optimistic.

If Leiper cannot convert one-third of the wavering councillors on what is a logical slam dunk, what does that say about his chances of being an effective mayor?

If a prospective Mayor Leiper can convince four or five more councillors, while holding the line on his bloc of nine, then perhaps, maybe, possibly he can cobble together the equivalent of the Watson Party come late 2026. But what if the Lansdowne vote splits along the Greenbelt?

What if his majority comes from within the Greenbelt … do we have a municipal two solitudes on our hands?