The majority of council incumbents suffered significant vote losses in last week’s election in comparison to previous performances, and a couple might not have won at all if ranked balloting had been in place. What might be deemed an anti-incumbent trend was even more pronounced across the bay in Burlington.
The most obvious incumbent loser was Doug Conley who was defeated by Brad Clark – but Conley was a one-term councillor who was defeated by his predecessor. Clark had made an unsuccessful bid for mayor in the last election and has now reclaimed his former seat in ward nine.
But six other Hamilton incumbent councillors who managed to hang onto their seats got far fewer votes this time than last time. Three of those failed to garner even half the votes cast, and three others couldn’t manage to attract the support of more than six in ten of their voters.
The most striking vote declines were suffered by long-time councillors Judi Partridge, Maria Pearson, Lloyd Ferguson and Terry Whitehead. Partridge dropped from 70 percent down to 52 percent and came within less than 200 votes of being unseated by sole challenger Susan McKechnie.
Pearson crashed from 58 percent of the vote in 2014 to 37 percent. Her two closest opponents combined for over half the remaining ballots. It was particularly shocking because she’s been the ward ten councillor for eighteen years and sat on Stoney Creek city council before that.
Pearson’s was one of the wards most modified by the boundary changes imposed by the Ontario Municipal Board and she was beaten badly by Jeff Beattie in the Winona area added to her ward ten. But Beattie placed third behind Louie Milojevic who captured three of the polling districts in Pearson’s old ward.
Arlene Vanderbeek has far less council experience having been first elected in 2014 with 42 percent. That dropped to 35 percent this time after the ward was expanded to include parts of Flamborough suggesting her hold on power, like Pearson’s, is tenuous.
That’s also the case with Jason Farr who despite having two terms under his belt, saw his voter support fall from 66 to 46 percent. His long time colleagues Lloyd Ferguson and Terry Whitehead should also likely be looking over their shoulder. Both were unable to win the support of at least six in ten of their constituents.
Ferguson dropped from 66 to 58 percent, while Whitehead fell even further – from 77 to 58 percent. Boundary changes could partly explain those shifts with Ferguson’s ward adding some rural areas and Whitehead choosing to run in the new ward mainly carved out of his old one, but voter dissatisfaction seems a more likely reason.
There were four ward races without an incumbent and many challengers vying for the ‘empty’ seats on council.
Ranked ballots could have produced different outcomes in each of these, although all the winners were substantially ahead of their nearest opponent. Strikingly, two of the new councillors – John Paul Danko in ward eight and Maureen Wilson in ward one – scored more than 40 percent of the vote – a higher share than veterans Pearson and Vanderbeek were able to muster.
An anti-incumbent surge was also very significant in Burlington where five of the six councillors are new, and Mayor Rick Goldring was soundly defeated by former councillor Marianne Meed Ward. Along with Goldring, long-time incumbent councillors Jack Dennison and Blair Lancaster went down to defeat. The only surviving incumbent is Paul Sharman and he only garnered 34 percent of ballots.
In contrast, four Hamilton incumbents romped to lop-sided victories on October 22 with the support of at least three-quarters of their constituents. The easy victories of Sam Merulla, Tom Jackson, Chad Collins and Brenda Johnson suggest that at least in Hamilton dissatisfaction with incumbents was not universal. And that was despite all having to cope with some changes to their ward boundaries. The first three have been in office for over twenty years, while Johnson has eight years of service behind her.
But even if these four appear solidly ensconced in their council seats, the strong voter support won by many challengers in other wards may encourage a few residents to be less spooked by the incumbent advantage and decide to test the waters in the next election in 2022.