It’s a stone cold fact that since the City of Ottawa was amalgamated in 2001, only two incumbent city councillors have ever been defeated in the east end’s four wards. They are former Beacon Hill-Cyrville councillor Michel Bellemare and former Cumber-land ward councillor Rob Jellett, both of whom lost their seats in 2010.

Bellemare was taken out by the current city councillor in Beacon Hill-Cyrville Tim Tierney, and Jellett was beaten by Stephen Blais, who is now Orléans’ member of provincial parliament.

To put it into perspective, there have been six municipal elections since 2001. Multiply that number by the four east end ridings and subtract the two times when there was no incumbent in the race and you have 22 occasions when an incumbent has been seeking reelection and they’ve only been beaten twice. That’s not exactly great odds for the challengers.

And on the two occasions when the incumbent did get beat, there were mitigating circumstances.

When Tierney ran against Bellemare, he was already well-established in the community, having created the Beacon Hill Community Association. Add to that the fact that Bellemare assumed there was no way he could lose and therefore didn’t need to campaign that hard, and you have a recipe for an upset.

The same situation occurred in Cumberland ward in 2010. Stephen Blais had already served on the Ottawa Catholic School Board for one year and was fairly well known. He also had a veteran campaign manager in Aldege Bellefeuille.

On the other hand, Jellett didn’t commit to his re-election campaign until quite late in the process and he did a limited amount of door-to-door campaigning once he registered.

Tierney and Blais are both anomalies. They managed to buck the trend because they were well known and the incumbents they were running against ran weak campaigns.

Incumbents normally have a huge advan-tage when it comes to name recognition, the ability to raise money, and the ability to recruit volunteers. Because, when it comes to trying to get elected on the municipal level, you need a combination of these three things: time, money and help. And if you’re missing one of them, you had better have an over-abundance of the other two.

If you don’t have a lot of money, you had better have a lot of time and help. If you don’t have a lot of time, you better have a lot of money and volunteers. And if you don’t have a lot of help you better have a lot of time and money.

The biggest advantage an incumbent has is time. Because they are still getting paid during an election, they can campaign full-time.

Most challengers have to still work to pay the bills while they are running for office. The exception to the rule are candidates who are self-employed, or can otherwise adjust their work schedules in order to campaign in public and go door-to-door.

The ability to recruit volunteers is another huge advantage for incumbents.

And money? Well, if a politician is doing his or her job properly in helping their constituents, getting campaign contributions shouldn’t be a problem.

And so comes the biggest advantage an incumbent has: voter apathy.

It’s a well-known fact that the greater the voter turnout is, the better the chances are for an upset.

Turnout in municipal elections is normally highest when there’s a contested mayoralty race for a vacant seat, or there’s some sort of motivating controversial issue.

The highest voter turnout ever in the former municipality of Gloucester occurred in the 1991 municipal election after then Mayor Harry Allen raised taxes by a whopping 30 per cent. Not surprisingly, he was easily defeated by Claudette Cain who would go on to serve five consecutive terms.

There are no one burning issue in this campaign that is going to provide extra motivation for people to get out and vote, and the mayoralty race is shaping up as a lopsided affair in the incumbent’s favour.

With all that said, however, miracles can and do sometimes happen. But they won’t happen through divine intervention. Rather, they will only happen through hard work and good fortune. I wish them luck.

(If you wish to comment on this or any other View Point column please write to Fred Sherwin at fsherwin@orleansstar.ca)