A candidate with the backing of some big political operators plans to enter this year’s race to be Ottawa’s mayor.
Alex Lawson, who owns a local home framing company, said he voted for Mayor Mark Sutcliffe in 2022 but now feels like the city is in worse shape.
“There’s a lot of potential in Ottawa, but there’s also been a steady decline of services recently,” he said. “I mean, what’s working better these days?”
That overlaps with the message of Kitchissippi Coun. Jeff Leiper, another declared candidate to challenge Sutcliffe in October.
But unlike Leiper, an urban councillor who champions progressive causes, Lawson lives in Dunrobin and had a foot in Conservative politics — previously serving on the board of the Kanata-Carleton Conservative Association.
Even so, Lawson said he doesn’t view himself as a conservative candidate.
“The nice thing about municipal politics is it’s not partisan, because solutions to different problems are going to come from different places,” he said.
Lawson said he plans to bring a “solution-oriented attitude” to priorities like housing, affordability, transit, traffic and public safety.
He said he wants to take Ottawa back to a time where the city worked better.
“Let’s get back to the old Ottawa. Let’s take a step back. Let’s hit the undo button. Let’s revert to the saved file of Ottawa, where the transit got you where you needed to go,” he said.
“You weren’t stopped by gridlock in traffic if you were trying to go downtown, and when you got there, you weren’t scared to be there. It was safe.”
Just this week, Sutcliffe delivered a “state of the city” speech where he highlighted what he views as significant progress over his term, including efforts to cut red tape blocking housing construction while making record investments in transit and police.
Seasoned political team
Lawson grew up in Ottawa’s Heron Gate neighbourhood. He said his company, Capital Framers, employs 17 people. He said running a business has taught him how to rely on the right people to get a job done.
But it hasn’t taught him how to run a campaign, so he’s surrounding himself with a team of seasoned political staff.
“It’s political operatives from both sides that have agreed to just bury the hatchet, put away age-old political beefs to get to actually have progress,” he said.
His campaign manager is his half-brother Emrys Graefe, who was deputy director of Stephen Harper’s 2015 national campaign. He’s also worked on campaigns for provincial conservatives such as Ontario’s Doug Ford and Alberta’s Jason Kenney.
Jeff Ballingall, a Conservative strategist perhaps best known for founding Ontario Proud, is managing the digital campaign. Fred DeLorey, national campaign manager for the federal Conservatives during the 2021 federal election, is a senior advisor.
“We need someone who can actually get things done and fix our massive transit, housing, and affordability failures,” DeLorey said in an email. “That’s why I’m 100 per cent behind Alex Lawson. Enough talk – we need a builder.”
Graefe said the team is also reaching out to senior Liberals. Quito Maggi, the CEO of Mainstreet Research and a frequent hand on Liberal campaigns, is Lawson’s campaign chair. He cofounded a government relations firm with Graefe.
Maggi said his record is 10 wins and one loss on municipal elections. He called Lawson “real and authentic.”
In his view, the public mood is ripe for a change.
Not worried about vote split
The election is Oct. 26. Candidates can’t even begin filing their paperwork to run until May, but Lawson said he wanted to announce quickly.
“The biggest issue that we’re going to have is a lack of name recognition. So we want to get out there early and let people know who I am and what I stand for,” he said.
Lawson dismissed any notion that his candidacy could split centrist and right-leaning votes with Sutcliffe, who attracted both Liberal and Conservative support in 2022, though he said he has heard the argument.
“Right off the bat they’re saying all you’re going to do is split Sutcliffe’s vote and Leiper’s going to come and win,” Lawson said. “I don’t think that’s the case, once people see what I’m bringing to the table and my solutions.”
He said he will share more detailed proposals later on in the campaign, but he gave a few hints about where he stands.
As OC Transpo lurches from one problem to another, Lawson said the first thing he wants to do is get Ottawa moving again.
While he acknowledged that there’s no sense deconstructing a multi-billion dollar train network now, he said the LRT “crippled the transit system.”
He’s nostalgic for the old Transitway, saying Route 95 “would get you across town every time.”
“Instead of bringing back routes that actually get you where you need to go, we’ve just been trying to force people onto the train so that it doesn’t look like it was a bad idea,” he said.
Though he acknowledged that Sutcliffe has made moves to cut red tape on housing, he said the city could do more to support construction, especially the labour force.
“When you understand what it is to have the boots on and actually build the house, you understand a little bit better how to get the houses built,” he said.
Lawson also focused on mental health, saying that witnessing the drug problem downtown is part of what convinced him to run.
“We can do more as a city to actually provide supports and make sure that when somebody does decide that they want to turn their life around, the support is there for them,” he said.
Aside from his business and political work, Lawson has also served on the board of West Carleton Disaster Relief and has worked as a lobbyist, focusing on technology and construction.