Mayoral candidate in Montreal comes out as long-time Muslim

Ken Hechtman writes from Canada:

Has the story on Richard Bergeron broken in the U.S.? First, some information on him from Wikipedia:

Richard Bergeron is a Canadian politician from Montreal and a 2009 Mayoral candidate.

Bergeron is the leader of Projet Montreal, a municipal political party. He is its mayoralty candidate for the November 1, 2009, election, aiming to become the first Muslim mayor of Montreal. He is presently a Montreal City Councillor for the de Lorimier district of the Plateau-Mont-Royal borough and a member of city council“s Commission sur la mise en valeur du territoire et du patrimoine.

This morning is Day 3 since he outed himself as a Muslim convert, and as far as I can see, only the French press here has it. The English Canadian press either doesn’t know or doesn’t care.

I’m imagining how this would play if it happened in the States. A Muslim convert wins and holds a city council seat for four years without telling anyone he’s a convert. Then he runs one of the best dark horse mayoral campaigns anyone’s ever seen—20 percent name recognition at the beginning to 24 percent voting intentions in a 3-way race three days ago. Then, with less than four weeks to go, he announces he’s a Muslim and has been for 18 years. The conservative press would go apes**t.

I’ve been working for the guy for four years and I had no idea. Most of his inner circle didn’t know. They found out by reading it in the Monday morning papers, same as everybody else.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 07, 2009 10:59 AM | Send