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“How did you vote in the 1995 referendum,” Projet Montréal mayoral candidate Valérie Plante was repeatedly asked this week.

She hasn’t answered, saying only that she doesn’t “self-identify as a separatist.” Plante’s team includes both separatists and federalists, and she promises sovereignty will not be an issue if she’s elected mayor.

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“I don’t see how this is relevant for Montrealers — if this would have been the reason I was doing politics I would be at the provincial or federal level,” she told the Montreal Gazette editorial board Monday.

A former Liberal MP, Denis Coderre, seeking re-election as mayor, has played up Plante’s fuzzy answer, proclaiming himself a federalist.

But as a 17-year-old, Coderre worked on the Yes side during the 1980 referendum, though he told an interviewer he “wasn’t a separatist,” and did so because he revered former Parti Québécois premier René Lévesque.