“You really should run for the mayoral position this fall,” a reader suggests. “I think you would win in a landslide.”

A few messages like this have hit the inbox lately. Before committing, let me share a little background.

In business, my career’s been OK. In politics, a fail. Of two bitter nomination fights and four hot federal elections, I won four and lost two. Mulroney liked me. Kim Campbell put me in her cabinet. Harper hated being in the same room with me.

Because I blogged. I chummed around with MPs from other parties. I used online tools to involve constituents in votes in the House of Commons. I polled Canadians, then suggested the government create tax-free savings accounts (eventually, it did). And I opposed plans for zero-downpayment, 40-year mortgages because that would inflate a housing bubble (Harper did it anyway and you know what happened).

So, I’m a lousy politician. The prime minister sat me in his fancy office one evening and made it crystal.

“You’re a journalist and we all know journalists make bad politicians,” Mr. Harper said. “Politicians know how to stick to a message. That’s how they are successful. Journalists think they always have to tell the truth.”

The PM told me if I shut up, stopped speaking openly and behaved myself, he’d give me a plum job. If not, there’d be trouble.

And trouble there was.

I was kicked out of the government caucus and the party. The finance minister stood before party members and told them, “Garth Turner is not running an alternative government.” My fate in the next election was sealed. As expected, my political career went poof.

I returned to making money before achieving immortality years later as a Lake Report columnist.

So, yes, I suck at politics. Success requires fluid beliefs, malleable morals and an appetite for compromise. Leaders want subservience. Voters want independence. People always wonder why every vote in Parliament isn’t a free one. But the concept of MPs who think for themselves terrifies parties.

Of course, local politics is different, right?

Nope. Worse.

There are no political parties represented on NOTL council. Although this level of government has the greatest impact on citizens’ daily lives, it is weak, ineffectual, rudderless and dominated by special interests.

That’s what happens when there’s no structure to vet candidates, marginal public interest plus senior governments that just don’t care.

Lately, council’s been tilted towards tourism, wineries and real-estate development. No wonder. Look at the backgrounds, passions and investments of the people there.

The result has been controversial hotel mega-developments, heritage destruction and genuflection to an insane Ontario plan to make us part of Vegas North.

And now, the greatest challenge.

Without asking citizens, councillors voted to reduce their numbers. So, less representative government. Meanwhile we lost a rep at the regional level and the lord mayor was given “strong” powers.

After this coming election, he/she can override any decision or approve the next hotel with the support of only two others. So fewer reps. Less influence at the region (where 65 per cent of your property taxes go). And decisions the majority may not support.

Democracy is slipping from your hands.

“The upcoming 2026 municipal election this October will have to go down as the biggest political grift ever. The over-use of the word ‘governance’ has allowed politicians and even the press to ‘sane-wash’ the changes we’re seeing before our eyes without realizing the damage that is being inflicted to our democratic processes,” the new NOTL Residents Association is warning.

“There is absolutely nothing that the local, regional and provincial politicians have inflicted this last term on our public governance structure that benefits citizens.”

Regular addicts will know I have profiled the three mayoral candidates — Vaughn Goettler, Andrea Kaiser and Erwin Wiens. A retired HVAC czar. A career winery personality. A veteran cop and grape farmer.

Will there be more choices? Maybe. But not me.

Harper was right.

Garth Turner is a NOTL resident, journalist, author, wealth manager and former federal MP and minister. garth@garth.ca