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“Some of the wards are pretty left wing,” Scharfe said, explaining the absence of property-owner candidates in wards like Somerset and Kitchissippi. But he said the slate is determinedly non-partisan, refusing even to label it philosophically conservative.

Photo by David Reevely/The Ottawa Citizen

The slate also has no mayoral candidate. “We’re going to let the mayors fight it out amongst themselves,” Scharfe said. As he pointed out, if enough of the slate’s candidates get elected, they’ll have a majority on city council and it won’t matter who’s mayor.

Even in the news conference announcing the slate — a rough affair moved into a corridor from City Hall’s main rotunda when it turned out there was a blood-donor clinic in the space the group intended to use — the candidates clearly had different ideas about issues even slightly outside the core promises that unite them.

Guy Annable, a candidate in College ward who proclaimed himself a proud Conservative (he harried Liberal candidates in the last provincial election by wearing a barrel and heckling them with a bullhorn), said Hydro Ottawa should pick up all of the customers of the provincial Hydro One utility who live within Ottawa’s borders, something Hydro Ottawa has wanted to do for years. Why hasn’t it happened? “Ask the minister,” Annable replied. “Ask [Bob] Chiarelli!”

Scharfe shushed him. “We want to make sure this train doesn’t go off the rail,” he said. But threw in that he’d personally like to see a hydro commissioner who’s empowered to order Hydro One to transfer its customers.