‘It takes a toll on you’: N.B. mayors get candid on political harassment, threats

A podcast conversation between current and former New Brunswick mayors sheds light on the personal attacks they face.

A conversation between one outgoing and three former New Brunswick mayors is highlighting the escalation of political harassment and threats in recent years.

“My son was physically assaulted twice,” says former Saint John mayor Don Darling, in a podcast posted this week. “I got lots of death threats, lots of anonymous accounts, followed down alleys.”

Darling was joined in the conversation by former Fredericton mayor Mike O’Brien, outgoing Miramichi mayor Adam Lordon, and former Moncton mayor Dawn Arnold.

“There was a man in jail, I don’t know if he still is, for threatening my life,” says Arnold, during the podcast discussion. “I got 2,500 life threatening emails in a 24-hour period once.”

Arnold, who was appointed to the Canadian senate last year, says she was receiving harassing e-mails daily in her second term as Moncton’s mayor.

“It takes a toll on you. I would just say the last five years have been very, very different,” says Arnold, who was elected Moncton’s first female mayor in 2016, after serving on council since 2012. “I think COVID changed a lot of things for a lot of people.”

O’Brien, who was elected to Fredericton council from 2001 to 2016, and mayor from 2016 to 2021, says the level of political discourse “changed so drastically” between when he started at city hall and when he finished.

“It was like night and day on what the public expected of you for communications and what you personally had to do with your social media and email accounts,” says O’Brien, in the podcast.

Lordon, who announced in January his decision not to re-offer for a third term as Miramichi mayor, says he made attempts to encourage a dozen other people to run for positions in next month’s local government elections.

“Nobody wanted to touch it with a 10-foot pole,” says Lordon. “And that concerns me, because we can only pick from the people who do put their names on the ballot.”

The podcast conversation was titled “The Role of a Mayor: Insights from Local Leaders in New Brunswick.” In an interview, Darling says he isn’t concerned the podcast conversation will put people off from the political process.

“It’s already happening,” says Darling. “People are aware, they see it, they see it on a daily basis on social media in particular.”

Last year, the municipal district of St. Stephen, N.B. penned an open letter directed towards residents condemning a rise in “public incivility and harassment of municipal officials.”

All four mayors in the podcast discussion blamed a decline in local news coverage of council and municipal committee meetings as partly to blame for growing misinformation and disinformation on social media.

“That’s where you see people getting upset about what’s going on in their city,” says Jamie Gillies, coordinator of the department of communications and public policy at Fredericton’s St. Thomas University. “So (mayor and council) are the frontline in terms of complaints, concerns, and then those become more than that.”

“It’s mayor and council that I think face the wrath the most because it’s at that tangential local level.”

Darling says reaction to the podcast discussion, and particularly the segment on personal political threats, has mostly been “very supportive.”

“But I’ve been quite frankly reminded or a bit shocked at some of the responses we’ve seen,” says Darling. “We need to learn again how to have a discussion, have a debate, and not come out of that debate hating each other, and attacking each other. If we don’t change something here, I think we’re going to see it get a lot worse.”

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