It’s 2026 now – HAPPY NEW YEAR – it had better be better than 2025; the nasty year.

It will be it’s Election Year! – Ontario Municipals and the US Midterms.

Here in Cobourg the electioneering wishers have been all over some members of the existing Council and pledging not to vote for them – “The Three Bs”. As these “Bs” are not named by most we would assume that the pledgers have selected Cllrs. Beatty, Bureau and Burchat as the three Bs. The same pledgers have sanctified the Mayor – Lucas Cleveland as the next Messiah and must be re-elected, even if his budget was not the one he promised and is made up of reserve raiding and hopes for more revenues from user-fees and fines, as well as having a, disturbing to some, attitude to governing. The rationale for such electioneering wishes stem from the perceived lack of action on the homelessness issues (they do not support the hang-em-high attitudes demanded by the pledgers) and the fact that they did not object and sometimes supported the actions of the Police Chief and his proposed budget.

Given the raucous adulation of the Mayor, by the majority of the posters on the Cobourg News site, it can be suggested that the next election in which he stands, despite the last election promise of being a ‘one-term’ candidate, could be a nail-biter as he also has many detractors to offset the cheerleaders.

The problem as the BurdReport see it is that there is no perceived opposition to the Mayor. Normally in a four year Council term the fault-lines have usually appeared before the end of the third year. As we enter the last term of Council only one person has ever put their head above the parapets. In his capacity as the Chair of the Police Services Board, Adam Bureau has clashed swords over the Police Budget but not much else. It would be fair to suggest that the Mayor, in a paranoic state, might consider Mr. Bureau to be a possible mayoral contender. Whether Mr. Bureau thinks he is, is another point of conjecture.

But whomever is going to be the Mayoral Candidate better start to move earlier than later. A year is a short time in politics and can dribble away in no time. Candidates will have to get their names out fast. In olden times when it was perceived that the Rotary Club had a significant political influence because of some members public political party politics, one usually knew if a prominent person was a Liberal or a Conservative; there was a certain element of individual prominence. These days hardly anyone can claim to be a prominent person in Cobourg. Consequently any person running for Mayor would not be recognised by at least half of the voters in Cobourg. It going to be hard to establish a public persona in a short time.

So in short, the next election issue will be one defined by the Cobourg Taxpayers Association – a Municipality dedicated to low taxes and social issues be damned. In fact if one even dares to talk about the common good the ‘Taxfighters’ will telling us we cannot afford whatever the measures needed to be taken to alleviate social ills or the common good. The issues will polarised and the CTA candidates will be quick to label the opposition as spendthrifts and expensive ‘do-gooders’ determined to bankrupt the Town. Sell the Town assets will be the election cry this time around, and then just like Doug Ford and like every other taxfighter, in history, waste the money on shameless tax reductions. Adopt the “Dexter Paper” will be the mantra. If it was so good why didn’t the Mayor, after paying 20Gs for the result adopt any of the recommendations?

We are now appealing to the silent majority, and it’s not the posters on the Cobourg News site, to get involved, find a candidate or decide to run yourself and get a campaign going. Running a campaign is not hard but very labour intensive.

As a public service to all prospective candidates please download the free book I wrote some years ago – “So you want to be a candidate” click on the link; view it at 50% and you will see what it takes to be a candidate. A free guide to being a candidate download it and get cracking! It should be noted that the process of getting elected hasn’t changed much this booklet written 25 years ago only needs another chapter describing how to run an electronic social media campaign and it will be complete.