CHARLOTTETOWN, P.E.I. - If he had to do the Charlottetown mayoral campaign over again, candidate Cecil Villard said he wouldn’t do anything differently.
Villard finished third in the mayoral race Monday night, and as he got ready to leave Hil’s Sports Bar where he watched the results, he said he felt fine about the outcome.
“I always said if you go into a race you always have to be prepared for either outcome, whether you win or lose,” he said.
Villard was no stranger to municipal politics going into the election having served 11 years a city councillor.
That included eight years as chairman of the city’s finance committee.
He lost his council seat to Greg Rivard in 2014.
Speaking to The Guardian, Villard said he ran a good campaign and was proud of it.
“I’m proud of the people I had the opportunity to work with,” he said.
Villard campaigned on a platform that included working with council to reduce the property tax rate on owner-occupied resident properties by five per cent.
He officially launched that campaign in May when Al Douglas and Jamie Larkin were the only people who had declared their intentions to run for mayor.
Douglas eventually dropped out of the race while Kim Devine and Philip Brown later joined it.
Brown was the eventual winner Monday night.
Villard said there might have been some irony in saying he would run his campaign the same way, despite losing.
“I ran a campaign the way I thought a campaign is supposed to be run. It didn’t work. That’s the way it goes,” he said.
Along with his runs at municipal politics, Villard also unsuccessfully sought the Progressive Conservative nomination in 2015.
Villard said the mayoral campaign will probably close the door for him in politics.
“I think that it’s been fun, but at some point in time you’ve got to say, OK, it’s time to do something else.”
With politics behind him, Villard said he plans to do volunteer work.
“It’s always been a big part of my life and I’ll probably just focus on that,” he said.
