Hamilton mayor and former leader of the Ontario NDP party Andrea Horwath came in third. Keanin Loomis’s rematch saw a decisive victory. Rob Cooper came a respectable second.

This is not a minor defeat. Andrea was once NDP and Hamilton royalty, even though her track record never quite aligned with her actual output. For instance, she never managed to beat either Kathleen Wynne or Rob Ford to become premier, which was not an impossible goal.

But coming a distant third, about 14% as of this writing (Loomis won with 41% and Cooper around 32%), this is, as the folks would say, a stunning defeat.

But she is not the only Ontario incumbent mayor to get her walking papers.

Niagara Falls, Fort Erie, Milton, Waterloo, Sarnia, Wilmot, Wellesley, Cambridge, Windsor, Kingston, Belleville, Oakville, Mississauga, Cornwall, Port Colborne, Brockville, Pembroke, Stratford, and Hamilton all ousted the old guard. Some of these mayors were in power for decades.

Not all incumbent mayors were kicked to the curb (Toronto’s Olivia Chow had nothing to worry about, neither did St. Catharines’ mayor Mat Siscoe, Ottawa’s Mark Sutcliffe, Brampton’s Patrick Brown, or Burlington’s Marianne Meed Ward), but it is interesting that so many were turfed.

But Horwath’s term as mayor was not a good one. The 2024 cyberattack was a major disruption that she couldn’t escape. Her property dispute dragged her personal life into the public domain, and it didn’t help her chances, either. She lost the goodwill of voters and it spelled the end of her tenure.

But it seems Hamilton is ready for a change: five incumbents lost their seats (although one was a councillor in another ward previously), bringing the number of new councillors in Hamilton to eight.