Sudbury from becoming a "valley of death". These remarks were widely criticized; former Inco CEO Scott Hand noted that, at the time of the takeover, Inco was a very stable and wealthy company which was the target of one of the most hotly contested bidding wars in recent Canadian business history and had not made any announcement suggesting jobs in the Sudbury area were under threat. Rodriguez made similar points in an open letter to Clement, also noting that Sudbury's economy had diversified from nickel mining. He was quoted as saying, "The most charitable thing I can say is maybe the minister has been misinformed." Clement later backtracked from his original remarks. 2010 election Rodriguez sought re-election in the 2010 municipal election. During the campaign, challenger Marianne Matichuk, a relatively unknown political neophyte, attracted attention and support by issuing a daily series of press releases attacking aspects of Rodriguez's mayoral record; by the time Oraclepoll Research released its poll of voter intentions in the mayoral campaign on October 12, Matichuk was in second place with 31.5 per cent support, behind Rodriguez but ahead of longtime city councillor Ted Callaghan. Rodriguez tried during the campaign to portray Matichuk as a Tea Party candidate, accusing her in one debate of basing her campaign on "Sarah Palin mathematics." On the final weekend before the election, the Sudbury Star published an article headlined, "City misled public about manager's dismissal," alleging that Rodriguez and the incumbent council had deliberately lied to the public about the resignation of Alan Stephen, the former manager of the city's infrastructure and emergency services division, in 2006. The incident described in the article was one in which the city appeared to simply have followed its legal obligation to maintain confidentiality around matters involving employee relations. Still, the article disclosed that Stephen promoted friends within his department, locked the city into 10-year contracts that cost the city up to $1.2 million annually, and took a leadership role at the site of an incident in which he was not qualified to do so, promoting a Ministry of Labour investigation into whether firefighters' lives were put at risk. The newspaper subsequently faced criticism for its portrayal of the story and for publishing the story only after it would be too late for Rodriguez or any other member of the city's staff to respond ahead of election day; in an interview on CBC Northern