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This article was published 18/9/2014 (2194 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Opinion

David Sanders doesn't have a campaign office. He doesn't have a volunteer co-ordinator. He's sitting at three per cent support in the polls. He has no plans to canvass voters door to door.

Yet, with 33 days to go before Winnipeggers choose a new mayor, Sanders doesn't believe it will be tough to leapfrog over a field of candidates who were campaigning many months before he announced his own run in August.

"I don't think so," said the lawyer, former journalist and retired provincial bureaucrat in an early-morning interview on Thursday. "There are many, many opportunities for me to express my concerns and to discuss any of the issues.

"Overhauling city hall, I would suggest that is the most important thing. Without doing that, I don't think any of these other promises are going to happen."

'I have the knowledge of these issues that prepares me to start dealing with them on Day One'

In short, the David Sanders campaign depends on a single, simple premise: David Sanders is the only candidate capable of cleaning up a municipal bureaucracy that allowed the fire-paramedic station construction scandal, the Winnipeg police headquarters debacle and series of questionable real estate transactions to occur.

Sanders believes he's more intelligent, more knowledgeable and more experienced than any other mayoral candidate. That may be true.

The problem is, this happens to be the only plank in the David Sanders platform. After joining the race late, he's betting all he needs to do to win is to convince Winnipeggers he's uniquely suited to the task of reforming the municipal bureaucracy.

"I need to establish I have the ability to deal with it, which frankly I don't think any of the others do," he said.

"I have the knowledge of these issues that prepares me to start dealing with them on Day One, which most of the candidates do not have the confidence to do, because they haven't been there. They haven't been paying attention."

You might call that confidence. You could also call it hubris. You may even call it a profound misunderstanding of what voters want from a politician: some form of emotional connection.

There's a precedent for this sort of campaign. In 2002, this city's mayoral race featured a campaign by David Lettner, who had an undergraduate degree in urban studies and a master's degree in public policy.

Lettner was intelligent and well-spoken. He could also come across as clinical. He appeared to be amazed voters weren't prepared to place an X next to his name simply because he was clever.

Ultimately, Lettner finished third in a field of five, behind Glen Murray and Al Golden, and captured a total of seven per cent of the vote.

Why did voters reject him? One reason is a mayoral race is not a meritocracy.

Voters don't choose the smartest or most qualified candidate. They tend to choose the most charismatic candidate who also happens to enjoy high name recognition and enjoy the support of a large volunteer corps that includes an organized, experienced and systematically run effort to identify the friendly vote and bring it out to the polls on E-Day.

Sanders, however, is not just intelligent. He's also an idealist. There's no other way to explain the hours he's put into appearances before council committees, where he's made a name for himself identifying problems with city processes.

Sanders said he's running for mayor because he fears the leading candidates -- Judy Wasylycia-Leis, Brian Bowman and Gord Steeves -- are preparing to sweep city hall's problems under the rug.

He said he fears the next mayor will look to the future and simply move on from the rot that tarnished the final term of the Sam Katz administration.

"It's not acceptable to me to simply say 'Well, we'll do better in the future, let's go on from here,'" he said.

"It's very important, painful though it may be, that we get to the bottom of this and that there be consequences for those who've done wrong, whether they intended it or not, so it sends a very clear message this kind of behaviour will not be tolerated and will be prosecuted, if necessary."

And what will happen if Sanders does not do the near-impossible and climb up from three per cent in the polls with 33 days to go?

"I'll be able to say to my grandchildren, when they ask me what I did in the war over the future of the city, that I did try to do something," he said. "That's something a lot of people can't say right now."

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca