One more week

This week in The Incline:

• History with Chris

• She's running

• All the fun down ballot

Sane judgement and integrity

One hundred years ago, on August 14, 1926, Hamiltonians opened their evening edition of The Spectator to catch up on the goings on in their booming metropolis of 115,000 people. The 26-pages of the evening paper were chock full of information and scandal and trivialities.

The trial of Hamilton’s most infamous resident (up until that point), Rocco Perri, was underway, and a judge had just set bail for the gangster and his associates at the unheard of sum of $20,000 each - nearly $370,000 in today’s dollars. Parks Board member T.B. McQuesten issued statements updating residents on the city’s road paving project and his desire to ensure smoother streets leading up to the growing community atop the Mountain. In crime news, a Main Street East man was issued $8 in fines for letting his dogs run loose in Bartonville after being called in by Hamilton’s city dogcatcher, “William Tyler, the enemy of loose and unlicensed dogs.” Tyler was something of a local celebrity of some controversy; the year prior, Tyler made news when he, himself, was charged with keeping a dog without a licence while serving as dogcatcher. Scandal!

There were stories of the new rector of St. John’s Anglican in Ancaster making his way to Hamilton and of the upcoming Women’s Conservative meeting to discuss the findings of a recent customs commission. There were pieces about the sale of land on Peter Street and a drunken assault in a home at Barton and Mary. There were updates about Dr. Shearer’s car trip up north and a local salad recipe that was in hot demand - a slice of canned pineapple, with cream cheese in the centre, topped with chopped nuts, served on a piece of lettuce and covered in a mayonnaise and whipped cream dressing. Yum.

Readers that day also got a glimpse into the civic conversation, as relayed by the paper’s higher ups. The Spec’s main editorial that day focused on the thorny subject of the ‘city manager idea’ (Hamilton only got a city manager in 1980 after council voted to abolish the elected four-member Board of Control and replace it with one appointed manager). The role of city manager was created in the United States around the turn-of-the-century and had quickly become the hot new topic in ‘urban reform’ circles. Hamilton’s mayor at the time, Freeman Ferrier Treleaven, was uninterested in the idea, as it would have diluted his power and that of the city’s relatively new Board of Control, which he had served on before becoming mayor.

The editors of the Spec opined that, while the city manager idea was one that Hamiltonians would one day have to “seriously consider”, it wasn’t the right time just then.

What the public demanded, they wrote, was “sane judgement and integrity in its civic representatives.” Sure, the editors admitted that sometimes Hamiltonians believed “the judgement of the council [was] far from sound,” but, for the most part, voters were “generally satisfied that the members [of council were] earnest, well-meaning men, seeking to do what is in the best interests of the city.”¹

Today, with just one week to go until the close of nominations for the 2026 municipal election, we are faced with a growing list of candidates for all offices. The drip drip drip of registrations threatens to become a full-blown torrent in the last few days of this nomination period.

And the question we must once again ask ourselves is simple: are these earnest, well-meaning people, seeking to do what’s in the best interests of the city?

Get ready, get set

The big news today is that Mayor Andrea Horwath officially filed papers to run for re-election at City Hall.

Back in June when I wrote about some of the online news influencers that populate the social media landscape here in Hamilton, I opened with a bit of alternate history where Andrea Horwath and Chad Collins both announce their mayoral bids on the same day. That bit was to highlight the erroneous reporting by one of those creator accounts that both Horwath and Collins had already registered.

In that piece, I wrote: “Quietly…the embattled 58th Mayor of Hamilton, Andrea Horwath, slipped downstairs from her second floor office and, in a modest room with election staff, filed her re-election paperwork. No backdrop of supporters like in 2022, no weeks long media circus, no flashy announcement.”

While I was doing my best attempt at Turtledovian fiction, it appears that’s exactly what happened. Horwath filed her paperwork alone and, in lieu of a press conference with throngs of supporters, issued a simple media release, which said “We haven’t solved every problem, but we’ve faced them head on, and we’ve made real progress.”²

A week ago, I was fully convinced Horwath would be sitting this election out. A Wednesday editorial from the Spec’s Scott Radley raised further questions, asking if slipping poll numbers or possible opponents or a rumoured job elsewhere was keeping her off the ballot. The only quote he could get was from one of her communications people, saying “she intends to seek re-election.”³  

I read that with suspicion. “Intends” can mean anything.

On Thursday night, speculation began to run rampant. Joey Coleman started an “Andrea Horwath Registration Watch” on Bluesky, pointing out that the mayor and some members of council will be in Ottawa for the Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference from Saturday until Wednesday, giving Horwath just three business days to get nomination papers in.

But now it’s official. Andrea Horwath is running for re-election, entering the race as Hamilton’s 9th mayoral candidate…or 10th, depending on when she got her papers in to the elections department; someone named Kevin Walker also registered today, though to noticeably less fanfare.

So what does that mean?

Honestly, I have absolutely no idea.

When I wrote about the reasons she might not run for a second term, I was thinking through the electoral calculus. Specifically, I was asking where might the money come from, where might the voters be, and what issues might come up to either help or hinder her campaign?

On the money front, she’s way behind, just by virtue of starting so late. Registering today means she has just 73 days to fundraise while her main opponents have had months of runway to do the same. Her biggest backers from 2022 don’t have as much money this time and, if they do, it’ll likely go to the candidate they see as most friendly to developers.

Voter-wise, I still don’t see where her support will come from in this election. In 2022, she won with 41.7% of the vote, squeaking out a victory over Keanin Loomis by just 1.2 percentage points. The only credible poll we’ve seen is nine months old, but has her 5 points behind Loomis. An internal poll from the Loomis campaign from earlier this summer showed an even bigger gap, with Loomis ahead at 38%, Horwath at 24%, Rob Cooper at 22%, and Scarlett Gillespie at 9%. The poll has a lot of issues - it was commissioned, so it isn’t exactly impartial, and 35% of the 921 respondents said they didn’t know who they were going to vote for - but it sends a signal, no matter how faint.⁴ Loomis built a base in 2022, Cooper has his conservative credentials and contacts, and Gillespie has been inspiring disgruntled progressives who may have reluctantly held their noses and voted for Horwath but, after the past four years, are unlikely to do so again.

And that’s where the issues come in. “We haven’t solved every problem, but we’ve faced them head on, and we’ve made real progress”? That’s strategically vague. It doesn’t give any indication as to what issues she’ll be campaigning on. But that same 2025 poll asked voters what their main issues are going into the election, so we have some idea what people will want to hear about.

The plurality - 34% - said “crime”, though again, crime continues to be low in Hamilton and there isn’t an “epidemic” of violent crime. That’s a narrative being pushed by conservative media outlets and candidates in an attempt to paint their opponents as being “soft” and unqualified to hold office. Still, we all know that the perception of crime as being an issue remains high, and little has been done to address that.

The next highest number was 15% who said “taxes” was their main issue. Horwath owns that, especially after the introduction of strong mayor powers and the transference of budget power to her office. The arguments about us picking up the bill for previous council’s financial mismanagement needed to be made starting four years ago. You can’t play catch up on that.

Homelessness and affordable housing were next at 12% and 11% respectively. The City of Hamilton’s own Housing and Homelessness Dashboard paints a pretty bleak picture there. The average market rent in Hamilton in 2025 was $1,439 a month. Based on the CMHC’s Affordability Calculator and plugging in some basic numbers (estimating $1,000 in non-housing expenses per month), the average rent in Hamilton is still considered “unaffordable” for nearly 75% of Hamiltonians. And over 2,100 Hamiltonian remain homeless as of June, 2026, including over 900 individuals who have been without homes for 6 months.

And all that comes before the as-yet-undetermined impact of Horwath’s influence over the data centre interim control by-law, which has angered some progressives to the point of near apoplexy. With Cooper’s opposition to the by-law and Loomis’s strategic neutrality on the issue, Gillespie has been earning support from people for whom AI is a major issue. While the mayor may try to play the jurisdiction card, I don’t think that’s going to fly for a lot of folks; the vote on the interim control by-law was both practical and symbolic, as it showed a willingness to take a stand against an unproven and unreliable technology that’s being used to further divide people and remove the remaining dignity and autonomy we have in the world.

All this is to say: Horwath’s campaign has a daunting task before them. But it’s a crowded race. Maybe Cooper and Loomis will fight each other over the suburbs and Horwath will sneak up the middle. Maybe Collins will see the crowded race and decide he has a shot after all. Maybe we’ll be swearing in Mayor Nathalie Xian Yi Yan in November. Who knows!?

Across the ballot

The main race generating any interest now is the open Ward 10 seat. There are eight candidates in the running, with many more undoubtedly preparing their paperwork.

Among the most notable so far are Cal DiFalco of “The Hamiltonian” blog fame, 2018 Ontario PC candidate in Hamilton East-Stoney Creek Akash Grewal, and 2014 Ontario Liberal candidate in the same riding Ivan Luksic. It’s hard to say who the front-runner might be, so there’s always room for a political heavyweight like former MPP Paul Miller, former Councillor Maria Pearson, former Mayor Larry Di Ianni, or former MP Chad Collins to swoop in and run.

Big names coming out of the woodwork and putting themselves forward is a fairly common occurrence in local politics, especially in Hamilton. Terry Whitehead’s surprise last-minute bid for Ward 8 councillor in last year’s by-election led to him coming in second. Former MP Scott Duvall was also in that race, and lost a close last-minute match with Esther Pauls for Ward 7 councillor in 2022. And who can forget ol’ Johnny Munro’s bid for mayor of Hamilton in 2000 after having been out of office for 16 years.

But it isn’t just a Hamilton thing, of course; Mike Layton is mulling a return to Toronto City Council, just one term after retiring.

My initial worry about some school board acclamations was evidently overblown. In just over a week, trustee candidates have emerged like so many summer cicadas. The Ward 1 race (over which I had previously indicated a level of protectiveness) kicked off when Ward 2 candidate Shawn McMullin switched seats, moving over to the west end from downtown. McMullin and Frank Crowder (running in Ward 3) are both involved in the union at National Steel Car, though there isn’t much available online about their interest in school board issues. Keen to see what each of them brings to the table.

Not long after, Jonathan Noble signed up to run in Ward 1. There isn’t much info available there, either, but, based on some preliminary research, it seems as though Noble is the father of Ward 15 trustee Graeme Noble and spouse of 2025 Flamborough-Glanbrook ONDP candidate Lilly Noble - a passionate advocate in the Stop Sprawl HamOnt movement.⁵

New candidates popped up in Wards 5 & 10, Ward 13, and in the Catholic board’s Wards 6, 7, and 12 & 13. All that means there are now nine contested seats among the 22 school board spots and 12 possible acclamations.

Some notable names are missing, though. Public Board Chair Maria Felix Miller and Vice-Chair Paul Tut are absent, as is Ward 8 and 14 trustee Becky Buck. On the Catholic side, Wards 3 & 4 trustee Josie Angelini and Wards 9 & 10’s Louis Agro aren’t on the ballot yet. And we haven’t heard one way or the other if any of them intend to retire or offer themselves up for re-election.

There was a time when a trustee’s decision to step down would have, at the very least, been a blurb in the Spec. The two Spec articles on trustees from the last week don’t mention any of those trustees at all, with one talking only to former Catholic board chair Pat Daly and the other interviewing a Mac prof without mentioning a single trustee by name. So now the public is left to speculate while rumours and second-hand information fly around wildly.

Chris pauses to ask himself if he’s guilty of that too…and then gets sad.

As we head into the last week of nominations, I’ll be looking out for a couple of things:

• Will any more high-profile mayoral candidates step up? It seems unlikely, but anything is possible.

• Will the council races fill out a little more? Six races are straight two-way fights, which can be complicated for incumbents. In 2022, as noted earlier, Esther Pauls nearly lost to Scott Duvall in a head-to-head. And, famously, Alex Wilson absolutely destroyed the electoral machine of Arlene VanderBeek thanks to a stellar debate performance, an incredible campaign team, and sheer persistence.

• Will anyone step up to take on Matt Francis in Ward 5? While the local rumour mill was churning a while back about possible contenders and drama, little seems to have come of it, leaving the right-wing councillor standing alone for the time being.

• Will Terry Whitehead return to challenge Dawn Danko and Jacob Tenbrinke for the Ward 8 council seat? What of the host of other candidates in the recent by-election?

• Will the school board races see any movement? Or are we headed for a slew of acclamations - which may further justify the Ford government’s desire to do away with the role altogether?

Stay tuned. Things are heating up with just one more week to go.

1  _{All references from the August 14, 1924 edition of The Hamilton Spectator - Spec archive link (Paywalled)}

2  _{Justin Chandler. “Andrea Horwath officially enters Hamilton's mayoral race ahead October election. Who else is running?” CBC Hamilton, August 14, 2026 - Link.}

3  _{Scott Radley. “The election deadline is getting close. Is Horwath running?” Hamilton Spectator, August 12, 2026 - Link (Paywalled).}

4  _{Mac Christie. “Election notebook: Hamilton mayoral contenders Cooper, Loomis tease platform priorities” Hamilton Spectator, July 23, 2026 - Link (Paywalled).}

5  _{Brenda Jefferies. “Meet your Ontario NDP candidate for Flamborough-Glanbook” FlamboroughToday.com, February 13, 2025 - Link.}