What happened at Jeff Leiper's election campaign Zoom meeting | Opinion

OTTAWA - June 3, 2026— Ottawa mayoral candidate Jeff Leiper poses for a photo in Ottawa Wednesday. TONY CALDWELL, Postmedia. Photo by Tony Caldwell /Postmedia

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It was surprising to get an invitation from Jeff Leiper’s team to a public campaign meeting on Zoom July 9, so of course I signed up. The exercise was a revelation and I would encourage other teams to do something similar, and more than once. Here’s why.

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It was supposed to last an hour but it went a little over because people were asking questions (and if there’s one thing everyone who’s ever met Kitchissippi councillor and mayoral candidate Leiper knows, it’s that he likes to talk.) About 90 people were in the meeting, and most stayed until the end.

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Leiper’s team ran through a presentation outlining its goals, efforts and progress. In detail. We know, for instance, that nearly 600 electoral signs have been requested in most parts of the city, that the team boasts over 400 volunteers (we even know how many hours, on average, they work), social media analytics for the most popular posts, and some key information about donors.

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So far, the Leiper campaign attracted nearly 800 individual financial contributors who, together, raised a hair over $116,000. The average contribution is around $135. The team took some time on that piece of information, pleased to highlight that candidate Leiper, unlike some other prominent candidates we could name, isn’t raking in large donations from entrenched interests like, I don’t know, real estate developers or some such. For Leiper’s supporters, this is a point of pride.

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The other piece of data the team, perhaps self-servingly, spent significant time on is that 40 percent of donors did not contribute anything to any campaign four years ago during the previous municipal campaign. This, Leiper’s camp insists, suggests those people are frustrated with the current state of the city.

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Indeed, Leiper’s entire platform can be reduced to “we want better.” (Or, a snarky columnist might say, at least different.) His slogan, “A City that Works,” taps into that frustration in a way that avoids being overly negative about current mayor Mark Sutcliffe. The team is convinced 2026 is a “change” election, based on concerns they hear across the city, which were also outlined in the public presentation: 1) transit has become less reliable, 2) infrastructure is falling behind, 3) the cost of living continues to rise, and 4) people feel City Hall is disconnected from everyday life.

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The formal presentation ended with a solid refresher for volunteers on the tone and message the campaign wants them to carry at the door. It went into specific things like the importance of leading with emotion, and how to avoid lobbing weirdly off accusations about the current mayor, like that he’s lazy or a bad person. The campaign is making a good show of saying this is a positive campaign — not in the sense that they won’t criticize the current administration, but in the sense that they are focused on showing why theirs is the right team instead.