UPDATED April 23: Ottawa's mayor offers a clinic in how NOT to do media

I've been interested in politics -- as an observer -- for a long time. And since buying a house here in Ottawa in 2000, my interest in civic politics has been keen. And I'm a flack.

With all of that, I have to shake my head in disbelief at the utter hash that Ottawa Mayor Larry O'Brien has made of his public image.

O'Brien was elected in 2006 on a surprising rush of support, over two serious competitors -- the incumbent mayor, Bob Chiarelli, a less-than-electrifying politician but one who had run the city with reasonably good results for two three-year terms; and Alex Munter, the youngest of all candidates, but one with experience as a newspaper publisher and in civic politics since 1989.

O'Brien was a neophyte politician who had never attended a council meeting. He campaigned on a few main planks:

• "Zero means zero" -- Zero property tax increases over his four-year term
• a review of the city's finances and management
  
• a review of the city's plans to build a light-rail system to serve the city's transit needs
  
• a general increase in "tough on crime" type policies.
  

Even O'Brien was surprised by the swiftness of his rise, telling the Ottawa Citizen at one point "I fell asleep on my boat in July drinking a beer and when I woke up I was the mayor of Ottawa."

But it didn't take long for the wheels to fall off.

• He lost his chief of staff, Walter Robinson, and his communications director, Mike Patton, within a few months of taking office
  
• He cancelled the light rail plan, and the city was slapped with a multi-million-dollar lawsuit
• The city awarded a sole-source contract to create a "vision" for the city to a consulting firm full of former O'Brien employees
  
• He picked a nasty public spat with the city's chief bureaucrat when he suggested that he should personally oversee all consulting contracts and hiring for half of 2007
  
• He suggested that Ottawa's homeless population were like pigeons in that if you stopped feeding them, they would simply "go away, and then announced a "kindness meter" program on live national radio, without having informed anyone in the city council or the city
• On December 10, O'Brien was charged with two criminal offences which alleged he had offered an opponent in the mayoral race, Terry Kilrea, money and assistance in getting a federal patronage job if he withdrew
  
• After being charged, O'Brien said he would take time to consult the public and council to decide whether he should take a leave or stay; three days later he claimed overwhelming support and decided to remain
• When he was booked in January 2008, O'Brien strode through a crowd of journalists, grinning and proclaiming that he "felt like a rock star"
• In February, he told radio station CFRA that he wasn't reading the Ottawa Citizen anymore, and that he would start his own blog "in the next week or so" to get the truth out to citizens. No blog yet...
  
• He led the city to a 2008 budget which approved a 4.9 % increase in property taxes, after
  
• In March, O'Brien issued a terse warning to the media to "leave his family out of this", after a rumour arose that an Ottawa Citizen reporter had a story that his ex-wife was soliciting donations for a defence fund from companies doing business with the city.
  
• The 4.9 % increase was rumoured to have turned into a 6.1% increase, and at last reading apparently will actually be around 4.1
  
• After Ottawa suffered through a near-record snowy winter, he proposed a $50 snow surcharge
  
• He lost advisor Dave Gibbons after media identified Gibbons as a caller to a local talk-radio show who identified himself as "Tom" and supported the mayor's snow-clearing initiative

The latest incident is likely the silliest. Apparently, one of O'Brien's two sons found some posts on a political blog, Apply Liberally, to be annoying, and left what the blogger says were "insulting" messages on the blog.

When CBC reporter Alistair Steele asked O'Brien about his son's behaviour during a previously scheduled interview, O'Brien seems to have gone just a teeny bit apes**t. He grabbed Steele's audio recorder, tried to stop it, then tried to erase what had already been recorded, and then ordered Steele to leave, carrying on the interview with an Ottawa Sun reporter.

So. After that litany, you should have a sense of why I despair for the city. I'm not arguing that a mayor needs to be concerned with media relations first. But in our system, the mayor has one vote of more than 20 on council. He needs to have credibility with the citizens, and with his council, to develop the consensus necessary to move the city forward.

Even if we assume that this is entirely a problem of perception, that in itself should be enough for O'Brien to do some serious soul searching. Even his closest and most fervent supporters must be wondering if their guy has what it takes to run the city right now.

So what should he do? Some might say take a leave while the criminal case is pursued. He's apparently chosen not to do that. So if he's going to stay, he's got to pull in his profile, get his office and his persona under control, and consolidate whatever support he has on council and within the city's administration.

Right now, he's bobbing in the water and the journalists are humming the theme from Jaws.

UPDATE, April 21: After a couple of sick days, I came back to my office to a voice-mail from a member of the mayor's staff. Apparently, the Mayor's blog is being tested right now offline, and will be online in early May.

UPDATE, April 23: The blogger who started all this foofurah has done a Youtube video summarizing things quite neatly. And humorously.



Ciao,
Bob.