A midway ride

Halfway there

Today - Thursday, October 24, 2024 - is the exact midpoint between Hamilton’s 2022 and 2026 municipal elections. We’ve reached that dizzying peak between electoral contests and it’s all downhill from here. Or uphill, depending on your perspective.

Any curious and engaged local resident might take this opportunity to ask an important question: what can we expect in 2026?

And the best possible answer I can provide based on years of research, analysis, observation, consultation, and machination is: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Only one councillor has said definitively and on-the-record that they’ll be a candidate in the 2026 municipal election. That’s Ward 1’s Maureen Wilson, who confirmed her intent during a conversation with Joey Coleman in September, saying she will be running for one more (and possibly final) term. Others have hinted or said privately they’re interested, but we have very little in the way of confirmation on any front.

Only one local elected official has come close to confirming they’re retiring - Wards 6 & 9 Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB) trustee Kathy Archer, who told Richard Leitner in 2022 that “I have one more term in me and then it’s time to retire and pass the torch.”1

There are 554 days until nominations open (May 1, 2026) and 730 days until the election. A lot can change between now and then.

Many councillors and trustees don’t want to show their cards too early for good reason. Let people know you’re running again two years out and folks can start organizing a campaign around your record. Let people know you’re retiring too early and you become a washed-up figure whose political capital is diminished, with community leaders and residents alike questioning the benefit of working with you if their desired outcomes might not come to pass, lest they take longer than two years to achieve. You have to be confident in your electoral abilities or your legislative prowess to make an announcement this far out.

And then there’s the bigger question of the mayor’s chair. Is Mayor Horwath going to pursue a second term? Will the eminently compelling Keanin Loomis make a second bid for the office and seal the deal this time? Is Fred Eisenberger going to make a return now that he’s soured on Horwath’s leadership? Will the centre-right Hamiltom East Liberal Party machine get their act together and run Chad Collins or Jason Farr for mayor? Is the “Concerned Hamiltonians”/right-wing populist crowd going to convince Peter Dyakowski to run? Are all my actual dreams about running for mayor not just reflections of a politics-addled mind but are, in fact, visions of a future yet to pass!?

There are two years to go, so all of this is anyone’s best guess.

But one thing we do know is that we’re going to have to work hard to boost voter turnout. Turnout has been trending downward for decades and, in 2022, we had the second lowest voter turnout in the amalgamated city’s history - only 1.9% higher than the low water mark of 33.5% in 2014.

As part of my real world job, I had to do some research on voter turnouts across Ontario. And, of course, when I looked at Hamilton’s voter turnout, I couldn’t just stop at what I was assigned. In an archive-enabled frenzy, I ended up collecting around 100 years of voter turnout data for our fair city. So I thought today’s as good a time as any to share my findings and get us ready for 2026.

Rogue waves and steady trickles

This is a graph depicting voter turnout in Hamilton from 1923 to 2022. It begins with the January 1, 1923 election and ends with the October 24, 2022 vote.

A little background on the timing of our elections: Prior to 1924, Hamilton’s municipal elections were held on New Year’s Day and were held every year. As selecting the date of local elections was a power granted municipalities, Hamilton could choose when it wanted to vote. The January 1 election had worked for some time, but it was becoming increasingly obvious that, with a lengthening holiday season, more and more people were feeling an earlier election would allow them to deal with democracy and then transition into Christmas without worrying about attending an all-candidates meeting all hopped up on turkey and festive cheer (egg nog).

In the January 1924 election, a referendum was held asking if voters wished to move election day to the first Monday in December. By a narrow margin - 50.2% in favour, beating opposed by just 62 votes - Hamiltonians backed the change.2 The city’s more working class wards voted strongly against the change, with residents living north of King between Bay in the west and Strathearne in the east rejecting the proposal. Understandably, working people had an issue with shifting the vote to a day they generally had off from work to a pre-holiday workday. But the city moved ahead with the change, scheduling an election for December 1, 1924.

For the first two years, voter turnout actually increased. That first December vote saw 35.7% of electors turnout to vote. The next had a turnout of just over 38%. Then a drop, a rally, and then two of the lowest turnout elections in the city’s history.

From that point to 1976, voter turnout in the city was wildly unpredictable. Turnout of 45.5% one year could lead into turnout 30% the next (1935 and 1936, respectively).

Take, for example, the lowest and highest turnout elections in Hamilton’s recent history: 1941 and 1946.

In 1941, only 22.1% of the electorate came out to vote, making it the lowest turnout year in the city’s last 100 years.

The year prior, only 32.2% of Hamiltonians voted amidst an early December blizzard that brought bitter cold and over 16 centimetres of snow. When the forecast for 1941 called for 6 degrees and some light showers on-and-off throughout the day, city officials hoped the comparatively pleasant weather would keep turnout at least as high as could be mustered during a snowstorm.

But the city was preoccupied with the deepening war effort. The front page of the Spec was ominously prescient, announcing to the city in bold and worried type: “ALLIES IN EAST MOBILIZING FOR ACTION; SEE JAPANESE DRIVE SOUTH IMMINENT”. The story, about a breakdown in negotiations between the United States and Japan, warned that the Empire might close consulates in the US and seek greater control over the Pacific. The attack on Pearl Harbour, bringing the US into the war, would happen days later and, within the week, Canada would find itself in a state of war with Japan.

In those last few days before a new front would open in World War II, Hamiltonians showed little interest in the coming municipal election. Enthusiasm around the election was so low that few challengers stepped up to contest seats, leaving 12 of 29 available offices acclaimed.

Mayor William Morrison was acclaimed, as were both the aldermen in Ward 2 and in Ward 6. There was only one contest for school trustee - in Ward 1 - and only one non-incumbent challenged the quartet of Sam Lawrence, Nora Frances Henderson, Donald Clarke, and Andy Frame who had held the Board of Control since 1939.

In Ward 2 (Durand East, Corktown, Stinson, and the western portion of the small but growing mountain settlement), where electors only needed to vote for the Board of Control, only 13.1% of people bothered to go to the polls. Only 14.4% of eligible residents voted in Ward 5 (Beasley and the North End), narrowly choosing CCFer Robert Thornberry over D.B. Gordon as their second alderman. In Ward 7 (Stipley, Crown Point West, Brightside), 18.8% of voters cast ballots, electing Communist Party organizer Harry Hunter to council over Tory-affiliated Archie Burton. Indeed, even though the vote was small, Hunter topped the polls in Ward 7 because of Brightside, where the Communists were able to secure over 75% of the vote.

Despite the left wing success, council was overwhelmingly right-leaning, led by the 61-year-old Conservative stalwart that was Mayor William Robert Morrison.

The Spec was perfunctory in its assessment: “Light as it was, the vote was fairly representative of the citizens as a whole…The verdict is a vote of confidence in the civic administration and should be accepted as a mandate from the people for fulfilment of the program of economy and debt reduction.”3

Just five years later, the record was set for the city’s highest municipal voter turnout ever with 65.1% of eligible electors casting ballots on December 9, 1946.

If you remember just one thing from all my pieces about local history, let it be this: 1946 was the most consequential year in Hamilton’s history. It was the beginning of a golden era in this city that would last until the mid 1970’s, bringing with it prosperity, opportunity, and change like Hamilton had never seen before.

For much of 1946, the city was rocked by strike after strike after strike. From the steelworkers to employees at Firestone tires to the Spec’s own typographers, Hamilton’s working people had finally had enough and were ready to stand up for their rights. Amidst this, organized labour was standing up and finding its confidence in politics, pursuing bolder and more ambitious policies.

At the same time, the attention of the world was fixed on the titillating and macabre details of the Evelyn Dick trial. Mutilated torsos, missing children, and the extravagant lifestyle of an otherwise poor family captivated people as all the sordid details were reported with breathless intensity by journalists from around the country and the globe.

In a testament to the spirit of the time, the front page of the Spec’s local section on election day carried stories about the record-breaking number of Hamiltonians casting ballots, Dick’s stay of execution (which would later be commuted to a life sentence, release from prison in 1958, and a pardon in 1985), and the president of the Ontario CCF railing against anti-Black racism.4

On that day, 65.1% of eligible voters cast ballots in Hamilton. Over 64,000 people voted for mayor, re-electing Sam Lawrence by a wide margin over his former Board of Control colleague, Donald Clarke. While only three women ran, two of them - Nora Frances Henderson and Helen Anderson - won their campaigns.

Voter turnout in Hamilton would never be that high again. The following year, elections were moved to the first Wednesday of December and turnout plummeted by 26.6 points. It wouldn’t break 50% again until 1950 when Anderson challenged one-term incumbent Lloyd Jackson for the mayor’s chair.

It was another decade before turnout broke 50% again. In 1960, Hamilton’s municipal voters came out in force to support lifting a ban on Sunday sports, throw out a host of entrenched aldermen, and elect flashy newcomer Vic Copps to the Board of Control.

Voters repeated their performance in the next election on December 5, 1962 (council terms had been extended to two years in 1954) when they replaced Jackson with Copps, voted to allow movie theatres to open on Sunday and allow all Hamiltonians over 21 with Canadian citizenship (technically “British subjects” still) to vote (people over 21 who lived at home - not renting or homeowners - were ineligible to vote before that), and voted against adding fluoride to the city’s water supply (too many bracketed thoughts, sorry).

That election was the last time municipal voter turnout would exceed 50% in Hamilton. The closest it would come would be in 1976 when 49% of eligible voters cast ballots, elevating Jack MacDonald to the office of mayor over Vince Agro, who had served as acting mayor since Vic Copps’ incapacitation earlier that year.

The next year, the municipal election would be moved forward again, this time to November. Changes to the Municipal Elections Act would increasingly centralize power over local elections, giving the province more and more authority to make decisions for municipalities. That was the case when the provincial Liberals bumped elections forward again to October for the 2010 municipal election.

Since 2010, voter turnout has not cracked 40% and the average is a loss of around 0.5% each election. The overall trend since that highwater mark of 65.1% in 1946 has been down, with a few dizzying highs punctuating a graph of modest lows.

High voter turnout is a sign of a healthy democracy, an engaged electorate, and a place where people believe their elected officials will respond to their concerns. Controversial candidates and big issues can boost turnout, but that kind of politics is unsustainable and draining.

All this is to say, the first question this far out from the election shouldn’t be “who is running?” The question should be “why aren’t people voting and how can we restore confidence in our democracy?” Yes, candidates themselves can help with the turnout issue, but, most importantly, we need to build a system that can withstand shock candidates.

2022’s turnout of 35.4% is a sign that our democracy isn’t as strong as it could be. It’s our responsibility to do everything we can to strengthen it.

As far as the leader knows

Next Wednesday, Ontario’s Finance Minister, Peter Bethlenfalvy, will unveil the government’s fall “economic statement”. That’s provincial government speak for “something between a budget and a press release”.

The signature component of this economic statement will be a little pre-election sugar for all you good little Ontarians. Yes, rather than fund our schools or hospitals or transit systems, the Ford government has proposed sending every Ontarian a little $200 reminder that Daddy Ford treats ‘em right.

While it will be framed as a “tax rebate”, it’s essentially a $200 nudge for every Ontarian so that people forget about all the problems in this province (and the wildly unpopular 401 tunnel scheme, which 52% of recently surveyed voters said they “strongly oppose”) and accept that he’ll topple his own government just to take advantage of favourable political headwinds. Doug knows he has a narrow window between now and the next federal election to sneak in an early provincial vote, and this plan to give every Ontarian $200 is as good an indication as any that we’ll be going to the polls within the next few months (likely late spring/early summer 2025). Even if Ontarians don’t want to have an election, Doug’s going to force one on us anyway because, as so many of his decisions and declarations over the past few years have shown us, he has contempt for our democracy, does not believe in limits on his powers, and will use every tool possible to get his way. Big ‘I’m not running a province, I’m running a business here!’ vibes

The looming early vote is why all the province’s serious parties are getting their candidates lined up now. The Greens had a huge nomination meeting for Matt Richter, their Deputy Leader and 2022 candidate in Parry Sound–Muskoka this past weekend. With Richter, the Greens have a very good shot at picking up the cottage country riding, so a big splashy nomination meeting is a good way to signal they’re serious and ready whenever Ford forces us to the polls.

One place nobody is ready is, again, Hamilton Centre.

On Tuesday, NDP leader Marit Stiles was on the CBC’s Metro Morning program with David Common. When Common asked Stiles about the party’s nomination situation in Hamilton Centre, the NDP leader said: “as far as I know - and I'm the leader - it won't be [Jama].”5

A few weeks ago, there were whispers that the party was clearing the way for Jama to return to caucus. The ONDP executive had commissioned a report examining “electoral scenarios” in Hamilton Centre, which included options like endorsing Jama’s independent run, simply not running a candidate in Hamilton Centre, or actively campaigning against her.

Now it seems like the party has opted for an all-out confrontation.

This puts the local NDP riding association in a weird position. The party activists on the ground both support Jama’s return to caucus and have expressed an interest in renominating her as their candidate. But the party brass has given them very different marching orders.

As David Mivasair, the riding association’s vice-president told CBC Hamilton, around 600 people signed up as supporters during Jama’s nomination back in 2023. But those folks are now split between a local NDP riding association that wants Jama back and Jama’s new independent riding association that seems hellbent and determined to forge ahead with an independent bid for re-election.

Jama has been noticeably quiet about all this. Like, uncomfortably quiet. Her office has not returned any of the CBC’s calls, and when the Toronto Star’s Rob Ferguson tried to ask her questions at the legislature, she brushed him off and said “I’m not talking today.”6

That’s not a great strategy. That’s actually a really, really bad strategy.

Indeed, much of Jama’s media strategy over the past while has been to ignore journalists. Sure, there are plenty of social media posts and there’s been some canvassing from the Hamilton Centre Independent Constituency Association, but there has been no effort to use existing media to amplify her message. When Jama came out against the Ford government’s evidence-less push to attack bike lanes, her letter was posted on social media, but wasn’t amplified anywhere else.

Let’s remember what happened on March 16, 2023 - only 22% of eligible voters in Hamilton Centre bothered to turnout. Of them, just over half - 9,560 - voted for Jama. If people turn out to vote in higher numbers in the next provincial election (and, with the intense focus that will be on Hamilton Centre because of Jama’s profile, you can be sure they will), that won’t be enough to win. A very vulnerable first-term politician cannot afford to ignore the media in favour of posting on Instagram to a core group of people who already support her. Not everyone in Hamilton Centre will follow Jama on social media, not everyone will be home when her campaign volunteers knock on their doors, not everyone will be sifting through the internet noise or engaging on a personal level with Jama without first hearing at least something about her in the news. It is always a good idea to use traditional media to your advantage, especially when the spotlight is already on you.

Ultimately, this election is shaping up to be really, really, really messy in Hamilton Centre. Both sides - the ONDP and Jama’s new Independent group - need to make a serious effort to sit down and ask themselves what the goal is here. This is a riding that has been in the NDP camp for the past 40 of the 49 years it has existed. The voters of Hamilton Centre have shown a clear preference for progressive, people-centered representation. That’s why the riding enthusiastically returned local champions like Norm Davison and David Christopherson again and again and again.

But what will happen in our next election is anyone’s guess.

Let’s face it: it would take a miracle for the riding to go Liberal. That’s because, at the provincial level, the Liberals are still, bafflingly, in shambles. Bonnie Crombie has done almost nothing to distinguish herself from Doug Ford and the party’s candidate recruitment efforts have stalled. They’re hosting a series of big money fundraising events (including one with tickets going for $3,375 that’s making the rounds on social media), but their Hamilton event on November 14 seems to indicate they’re focused more on winning Hamilton Mountain now that popular NDP MPP Monique Taylor is making the jump to federal politics.

Of the newly nominated Liberal candidates who aren’t incumbent MPPs, most are recycled candidates from 2022 who still lost their ridings because all they did was sap support from the NDP without making inroads with non-voters or disgruntled Tories. After her narrow leadership win, the hope was Crombie would work to bring her party back together and get them organized before the next provincial vote. That hasn’t happened and they are increasingly looking like a carbon copy of Doug Ford’s PCs, only with worse branding. If not for the personal animosity between Crombie and Ford, it would not be outside the realm of possibility (though still highly unlikely) to see a folding of the parties together à la British Columbia. All this is to say that I seriously doubt the Liberals have the capacity to divert the resources to Hamilton Centre necessary for them to take the seat.

But I’ve been wrong before. It is possible that a prominent local will be convinced by local Liberal leadership to step up, bring their own donors and volunteers, and ride to victory on the strength of their personal brand. It has happened before. Dominic Agostino was a wildly popular local alderman and managed to turn Hamilton East Liberal red at a time when the rest of the province went Tory blue.

It is far more likely, though, that the PCs would make a play for Hamilton Centre, putting up a strong candidate and absolutely inundating the riding with attacks on Jama and on the NDP for getting her elected in the first place. But, since the riding was recreated for the 2007 election, the PCs have never earned more than 17% of the vote, so it would be a challenge for them to take it as well. Again, strong candidates can change everything.

Personally, I’d like to see the NDP and Jama’s Independent group sit down and have an honest conversation about their goals and aspirations. Running against one another on similar platforms would be foolish and destructive, particularly if the sticking points are so minor. Jama could accomplish more from within the ONDP caucus than from without and, if she were re-elected as an Independent member, there’s nothing stopping the PCs from dragging up another censure motion and silencing Hamilton Centre’s elected representative for another term. And, even if the NDP runs a different candidate and wins, as I noted before, it is possible the progressive campaign infrastructure in Hamilton Centre will be so bruised, it will be left vulnerable for future campaigns.

Like with everything, we’ll have to wait for the inside players to make up their minds. At this point, there’s little the public can do other than try and put pressure on both sides to come to some kind of arrangement. But given how deep each side has dug themselves in so far, it’s uncertain that even sustained lobbying from the community will move anyone. Indeed, it might simply be up to the voters of Hamilton Centre to pass judgement on this whole event on election day.

*Don Don Donnnnn*

On Monday, November 4, voters in Toronto’s Ward 15 - Don Valley West will be going to the polls to elect a new city councillor. The ward’s councillor, Jaye Robinson, died in May after a lengthy battle with cancer.

There are 16 candidates in the running to fill the vacant seat, including perennial candidates Habiba Desai, Peter Handjis, Syed Jaffery, Cleveland Marshall, and Daniel Trayes, as well as Robinson’s son, Sam.

But the four biggest candidates in the race are Toronto District School Board (TDSB) trustee Rachel Chernos Lin, TTC chair advisor Dhruv Jain, Liberal Party staffer Evan Sambasivam, and far-right commentator and 2023 mayoral by-election candidate Anthony Furey.

There’s been little polling done on the race, but what polling has been conducted shows Furey presently leading Chernos Lin 27% to 23%, with 30% of voters still undecided.

For weeks, there has been behind-the-scenes wrangling in a desperate effort to not split the “progressive” vote in the ward. Chernos Lin’s fundraising has been led by Jane Rounthwaite, who is the partner of former Premier Kathleen Wynne. Wynne’s been working to coordinate between candidates to try and stop Furey. According to the Toronto Star:

For weeks, Chernos Lin, Jain, and Sambasivam all campaigned vigourously for the seat, but, as polling indicates, the TDSB trustee’s profile helped vault her ahead of her other Liberal Party-affiliated opponents.

Rather dramatically, both Jain and Sambasivam announced on Tuesday that they were dropping out of the race and endorsing Chernos Lin. Jain tweeted that Chernos Lin “is the only candidate who can defeat Anthony Furey” while Sambasivam took it a step further, saying he was dropping out “to stop [at]anthonyfurey and his white nationalist rhetoric.” Sambasivam’s statement is even more bold considering Furey’s legal team had previously sent threatening letters to his campaign, demanding he stop calling the former Toronto Sun columnist a white nationalist.

While their names are on the ballot, the two are now actively working to funnel their support to Chernos Lin. While Furey might be fureyous about the involvement of the Liberal Party (his loudest supporters have taken to calling Chernos Lin “a woke, alt-left candidate” as if that’s a thing), this might be what clinches the race for the trustee.

Furey’s campaign is another in a long line of “anti-woke” far-right campaigns that have more to do with disrupting the basic mechanisms of government than advancing any coherent program. Like the MAGA crowd, the BC Conservatives, and a growing number of Poilievre’s federal Tory candidates, it isn’t about policy; it’s about harnessing anger and riding it into office to do nothing more than generate more anger. The goal is to make regular people so mad, they can’t focus on anything other than being mad, while you get to ram through unpopular policies unchallenged.

Cut the municipal parks budget? Easy, if people are distracted by you screaming “WOKE MOBS ARE TRYING TO TRANS YOUR KIDS!”

Widening roads and gutting transit service? Simple, when you shout “MIGRANT CRIME IS RUINING OUR CITY AND SHARIA LAW IS IMMINENT!”

Doing nothing to make housing more affordable while lining the pockets of developers and wealthy investors? Piece of cake! Just scream “JUSTICE FOR THE UNVACCINATED AND ENCOURAGE REAL CANADIANS TO HAVE MORE BABIES!”

This rare moment of cooperation between competing partisans in a municipal race might help stave off a far-right win. But, more importantly, it signals the need for real municipal electoral reform.

Ranked ballots, accountability mechanisms, and a serious look at municipal parties might be just the thing to take all the wind out of the sails of these extremist disruptors.

Cool facts for cool people

• Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is committed to staying on and fighting the next general election, despite 16% of his caucus openly asking him to step down. The Liberal rebels gave JT until Monday to decide how to respond to their calls, but he’s given his answer early. Given that those rebel MPs have said they would even consider voting against the government, expect some drama over the next few weeks in Parliament.

• Montreal’s Valérie Plante, easily one of the best mayors in Canada, has announced she is not seeking a third term. Plante’s politics are inspiring, to say the least, and she’s been a dedicated civic leader, advancing a strong, evidence-based series of policies designed to make Montreal a stronger and more vibrant city. But, like most politicians now, she’s been the target of sustained and vicious attacks that have worn her down. Her office recently had to shut off commenting on all her posts because of the level of hate she was getting. Hopefully her Projet Montréal party will find a compelling candidate to carry on her vision after their municipal elections next year.

• My favourite (other) newsletter, Garbage Day, posted a link to this story. It’s wild. This is a deep dive into how elderly Americans, many of whom have varying levels of dementia, are being preyed upon by political campaigns for donations. Check it out here.