By Pepper Parr
February 27th, 2022
BURLINGTON, ON
OPINION
Some facts:
Municipal election results for Mayor of Burlington
Rick Goldring won with 21,797 votes. Goldring defeated Cam Jackson and Marianne Meed Ward ran and as a Councillor and won in ward 2. Anne Marsden was not a candidate in the 2010 election.
In 2014 Rick Goldring ran for re-election and won with 23,360 votes.
Anne Marsden delegating at Burlington city council with her husband David
Anne Marsden ran and got 3,043 votes.
In 2018 Marianne Meed Ward ran for Mayor and defeated Rick Goldring.
Meed Ward – 23,360 votes
Goldring – 16,781 votes
Anne Marsden ran against Gary Carr for Regional Chair
Gary Carr – 79,775 votes
Anne Marsden – 41,136 votes
The data above is all a matter of public record on either the city of Burlington web site or the Region of Halton web site.
On February 24th, Anne Marsden released the information set out below.
Marsden does not provide dates for the votes she lists. The amounts spent are a matter of public record.
The Goldring data is for the 2018 municipal election as is the data for Meed Ward.
The Marsden number represent the number of votes she got from the voters of Burlington who chose her as Regional Chair in 2018.
The data Marsden provides appears to be intended to convince people that Marsden is a credible candidate and can pull in a lot of votes without spending very much money.
We believe the numbers are misleading and were intended to mislead.
Anne Marsden has positioned herself as a person who hews to the truth and argues vociferously that she has the facts and that she is right.
She has on occasion done a good job of digging out facts – especially with the C. difficile outbreak at the Joseph Brant Hospital in 2009.
The virus overran the hospital from May 2006 to December 2007- the information was not released until 2009.
Salt with Pepper is the musings, reflections and opinions of the publisher of the Burlington Gazette, an online newspaper that was formed in 2010 and is a member of the National Newsmedia Council.
I won’t say she can’t win, or criticize her, as that’s lousy and cheap talk and not fair – she deserves respect. But she really needs to frame her platform with the present, the issues people are concerned about today and the near future.
She needs to explain coherently how she views the present, and what she believes she would do if elected about those issues. How will she move forward, and why is she the better candidate?
Much of what I have seen and heard are issues from the past, many complaints about accountability and transparency, and I have to question whether people care at all about these. The past no longer exists, it cannot be changed. What can be changed is what we do now about creating the future, and what is worthy of the Mayors time.
What will she do and how does she understand that?
It’s unfortunate when Anne Marsden enters any campaign because she muddies the waters and distorts the competition. I hope that she choses to remain on the sidelines in 2022 and allows for a decisive and clear mayoral race in Burlington.
“Misleading”? Definitely deception! That’s exceptionally close to lying !
And that woman has the audacity to criticize and question the ethics of the Mayor, Councilor Kearns particularly, but also the entire City council.
She should be ashamed of herself. She should issue an apology and withdraw from any election race. She is unfit !