| Marianne Matichuk | |
|---|---|
| Mayor of Greater Sudbury | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office December 1, 2010 |
|
| Preceded by | John Rodriguez |
| Personal details | |
| Residence | Sudbury, Ontario |
Marianne Matichuk is a Canadian politician, who was elected mayor of Greater Sudbury, Ontario in the 2010 municipal election.[1] She is the city's first elected female mayor,[1] although Grace Hartman was previously appointed mayor following the death of Max Silverman in 1966.
An occupational health and safety consultant, first with the city and later with Vale's operations in the Sudbury area,[2] Matichuk was virtually unknown before launching her mayoral campaign in September 2010.[3] However, she quickly gained attention with a focused campaign in which she issued a series of daily press releases attacking aspects of incumbent mayor John Rodriguez's record; by the time Oraclepoll Research released its poll of voter intentions in the mayoral campaign on October 12, Matichuk was in second place with 31.5 per cent support, behind Rodriguez but ahead of longtime city councillor Ted Callaghan.[4]
She made few concrete campaign promises of her own; those she did make included doing a line item review of the city's budget[5] and permitting retail stores in the city to open on Boxing Day.[6]
The mayoral candidacy of David Popescu, a perennial candidate in the Sudbury area who was convicted of hate speech after advocating the execution of homosexuals in the 2008 federal election campaign, also emerged as a minor issue when he was permitted to participate in a mayoral debate sponsored by the Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce.[7] Matichuk publicly criticized the Chamber of Commerce for not excluding Popescu from the debate, while opposing candidate Derek Young called Matichuk's move a populist ploy that would both undermine the democratic process and distract from other issues in the debate, and the Chamber of Commerce reiterated that its standing policy when sponsoring political debates was to invite all registered candidates regardless of their personal views.[7] Popescu had already participated in other mayoral debates during the 2010 election campaign without incident, and none of the candidates for mayor, including Matichuk, opted to boycott the Chamber of Commerce debate over Popescu's inclusion.
On October 22, the final Friday before election day, Matichuk secured the endorsement of the Sudbury Star.[8] The paper noted her lack of political experience and the highly negative tone of her campaign — in an earlier editorial, in fact, the paper had named her alongside Toronto mayoral candidate Rob Ford as an example of an apparent Tea Party mentality entering into Ontario's municipal elections[9] — but argued that in public debates and other dealings with the city's media, she had shown herself to be a substantial and practical voice.[8] Rodriguez also tried to portray Matichuk as a Tea Party sort of candidate, accusing her in one debate of basing her campaign on "Sarah Palin mathematics"[10] and ultimately attributing his defeat to a "negative, American-style campaign".[11]
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