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tank: tainted, tired atchison's saskatoon mayor bid sure to struggle
former mayor don atchison's entry into the saskatoon mayoral race seems likely to hurt gord wyant and benefit cynthia block, similar to the scenario in 2020.
aug 20 2024
3 minute read
mayoral candidate don atchison addresses taxes in saskatoon, sk in october of 2020.
michelle berg
/
saskatoon starphoenix
for the fourth straight election, a four-term saskatoon mayor who was voted out of office has announced a campaign to regain his old job.
in 2012 and 2016, henry dayday proclaimed he was running, but aborted his campaigns.
now, as expected, don atchison has jumped into the race to regain the job he lost eight years ago to mayor charlie clark . atchison finished third in his first comeback attempt four years ago.
so saskatoon’s mayoral race is shaping up remarkably like the 2020 contest between atchison, a former saskatchewan party cabinet minister, a council incumbent and political outsider cary tarasoff, who finished a distant fourth.
the obvious scenario that emerges is that atchison will split the centre-right vote with gord wyant, just like he did with rob norris in 2020. clark won four years ago with nearly half of the vote; norris took 26 per cent and atchison garnered 20 per cent.
if that proved humiliating or humbling for atchison, who had won seven straight elections, including four as mayor and three as a councillor, he appears to have shaken it off.
atchison’s entry will hurt wyant and benefit coun. cynthia block , who is trying to become the first woman elected saskatoon mayor and is only the 12th woman who’s tried.
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at 72, atchison would be the oldest person elected saskatoon mayor, as would wyant if he wins.
but atchison’s campaign seems destined to struggle. he appears to lack any online presence and an august launch repeats the same mistake he made in 2020. back then, he only raised about half of the money both clark and norris did in saskatoon’s highest-spending mayoral race.
and he’s probably become less appealing to donors. few businesses especially will want to be associated with a politician who repeatedly refused to attend saskatoon’s pride parade .
since 2020, however, his unusual relationship with legacy christian academy (formerly christian centre academy) and christian centre church (now two mile church) has been revealed . students have alleged they were required to work on atchison’s campaigns for mayor.
atchison has acknowledged this happened, but said he believed the students wanted to be there. yet perhaps we can now understand better why he spurned the pride parade.
further, the church and school face numerous allegations of sexual and physical abuse contained in a $25-million class-action lawsuit by former students and others.
a former teacher and athletic director at the school was jailed in january for sexually assaulting a student, and three others face criminal charges .
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the trial of the school’s former director, john olubobokun, on charges of physically abusing students with a paddle, is set to resume in october — weeks before saskatoon residents vote.
that’s a lot of baggage, particularly for a candidate who sounds like he’s simply exhuming the tired themes from his failed 2020 campaign. an atchison sign says his priorities include “restoring law and order,” as though the city has descended into anarchy.
he’s also resurrected his ridiculous property tax freeze pitch from his first victory in 2003, which he also revived in 2020. atchison lacks any credibility here, since property tax increases during his 13 years as mayor averaged 4.3 per cent, slightly higher than during clark’s eight years (4.2 per cent).
and atchison never faced the fiscal challenges clark’s council, including block, did, like soaring inflation and the province withholding grants in 2017.
as for crime, saskatoon’s crime severity index rose in atchison’s final term in office before stabilizing under clark , aside from a dip during the pandemic.
yet wyant will find atchison’s weaknesses difficult to exploit. atchison will be seen by many as too old, but wyant is not much younger.
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crime is worse provincially than it is in saskatoon, and wyant’s provincial portfolios included justice. plus, wyant was barred from the saskatoon pride parade this year over his support for his government’s pronoun bill.
and many feel the province failed to provide proper oversight for private christian schools , so it’s dicey for wyant to mention that topic as a former minister of justice and of education.
wyant also comes from a provincial government that has imposed huge tax increases and he served on city council during the first half of atchison’s time as mayor, when tax hikes began to climb.
regardless, atchison’s support has declined in four straight mayoral elections and his tired, tainted campaign makes it tough to imagine that trend ending in november.
phil tank is the digital opinion editor at the saskatoon starphoenix.
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