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By 8:15 Tuesday morning, Mike Savage had finished his poached eggs on whole-wheat toast at the Bluenose II Restaurant.

He had passed judgment on his beloved Montreal Canadians — “You can’t win a cup by tinkering around the edges” — and the woeful state of United States.

He had told me how COVID-19 was impacting his work as mayor: He had just called off a visit to Portsmouth, England, slated for later this month, and the avuncular politician, who seldom sees a hand he doesn’t want to shake, elbow-bumped me when he arrived at our booth.

Finally, he just got down to it.

“I’ve decided to run for mayor again,” he said. “I don’t want to make a big deal of it in the middle of the circumstances around the coronavirus. But people are asking me and I know that there are some people who would run in the event that I don’t and I just quietly want to let people know that I’m going to go to the people in the fall.”

He said it wasn’t a slam-dunk that he would try for a third term.

“I am not someone who believes that longevity is the mark of success in politics,” he said.

'Best job I’ve ever had'

Halifax Mayor Mike Savage speaks with the Chronicle Herald inside the Bluenose II restaurant on Tuesday. Savage will re-offer in the upcoming October municipal election. - Ryan Taplin

When he was elected mayor in 2012, he said the plan was to govern, then decide whether he would run again. Same thing in 2016 in which he ended up out-pacing restaurant owner Lil MacPherson.

“I don’t want this to be my last job,” he told me.

But at 59, he concluded he had the fire in his belly for another run.

“I think it’s the best job I’ve ever had,” he said. “I think it’s the job that I’m most well-suited for, and it’s the job about which I’m most passionate.”

It’s a good time to be mayor of Halifax, and he knows it. According to Statistics Canada, the city recorded the third-highest population growth of any metropolitan area in Canada from 2018-2019.

This isn’t just about rural areas emptying out: Halifax has gained nearly 20,000 new Canadians during the past five years.

Construction cranes are everywhere in the downtown. Young people, once bound for parts west, are increasingly staying put in a city with a spike in knowledge-based jobs.

“A lot of that is due to the leadership Mike has shown on council,” said Dist. 7 Coun. Waye Mason, who, at some point intends to run for mayor, but will support Savage in the Oct. 17 municipal election.

The competition

Coun. Matt Whitman takes part in a debate in Halifax council chambers. - File

So far Matt Whitman, the councillor for Hammonds Plains-St. Margarets, is the only other person to declare their candidacy for mayor.

It’s early days for team Savage, which at this point doesn’t even have a campaign chair.

In the fall of 2020, as in 2016, you won’t see many lawn signs with his name on them. “I don’t think that’s the future of campaigning,” he said.

Instead look for Savage to do what he always does: Get out to eight events a day, as he was scheduled to do on Tuesday, during which he mostly lives by his political motto “take the job seriously but not yourself.”

One reason he’s been able to get things done, Savage told me, is because he enjoys “broad-based support across the municipality.” He feels he’s learned to be a uniting force in a council that, when he became mayor in 2012, was often described as dysfunctional. He also thinks the civil servants know that he has their backs.

When I asked him about the good things that have happened under his leadership Savage talked about the population increase and the way the city has become a destination for young people, the booming downtown as well as the new “complete communities outside of the core.”

His biggest disappointment as mayor, he told me, was an inability to “move the ball much on affordable housing.” In future, he talked about doing more to ensure the city’s progress accrues to everyone, including marginalized groups.

We talked for a little bit more — about his youthful crush on Belinda Carlisle, and his deep admiration for Bobby Kennedy, which is such that he was able to recount, word-for-word right there in the Bluenose, Teddy Kennedy’s eulogy for his brother.

A few minutes later he was up, coat on, heading for city hall where another council meeting awaited.

But I noticed he stopped at a table on the way out. The folks sitting there may, for all I know, have been complete strangers but Mayor Mike was leaning over the divider in their booth, talking to them like he’s known them forever.

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