The Mayoral Race- Looking Ahead

With roughly seven months until voting day on October 26, 2026, the Hamilton mayoral contest is shaping into a high-salience rematch environment where affordability/taxes, crime, and homelessness are front-of-mind for many voters.

The last mayoral election (October 24, 2022) was extremely close: Horwath won 59,216 votes (41.68%) to Loomis’s 57,553 (40.51%), a margin of 1,663 votes, with turnout at 35.38%. That narrow baseline matters because it signals a near-even, polarized electorate where small shifts (turnout, candidate quality, or a split field) can decide the outcome.

Incumbency and name recognition strongly favour Horwath: the Mayor’s official page frames her first-term agenda around housing, infrastructure, economic growth, community safety, and affordability, and highlights the expanded “strong mayor” framework in Hamilton. That said, the same dynamics can cut against incumbents when service quality, visible disorder, or property-tax increases become the dominant lens.

Loomis enters as the most structurally advantaged challenger because he has already proven citywide coalition potential: he lost by fewer than 1,700 votes in 2022 and is now explicitly pitching “buyer’s remorse” and “change at City Hall,” arguing the incumbent now has a “record to run on” and that voters are unhappy with it. He was the CEO of the Canadian Institute of Steel Construction and is running a “culture/management” critique more than a single-policy crusade—an approach that tends to resonate when voters perceive operational dysfunction (“paying more for less good services,” as one academic interviewee put it). 

Rob Cooper is a potentially consequential spoiler—or consolidator—depending on whether he can expand beyond a ward base. Cooper is the sitting Ward 8 councillor (West/Central Mountain) and won that seat in a 2025 by-election with 1,129 votes on 20.88% turnout, indicating proven but geographically narrow support. His early messaging emphasizes restoring “safety,” “affordability,” and “economic strength,” with platform themes including taxes, crime, housing, and infrastructure. If Cooper competes for the same “change/affordability” voters Loomis is targeting, he could split the anti-incumbent vote and reduce Loomis’s path to a plurality.

Scarlett Gillespie is positioning a policy and accountability agenda more associated with progressive urban activism—housing and tenant protections, climate justice, community-led safety, arts, accessibility, transparency, and City Hall accountability. That platform could mobilize renters, downtown progressives, and issue-based networks, but it could also fragment left-of-centre voters if Horwath’s coalition overlaps with those constituencies.

Derek Cordeau appears to be running as a community advocate/outsider; specific platform planks, organizational endorsements, and fundraising are unspecified.

Ontario’s Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act, 1996 sets the transparency context by requiring disclosure of salary and taxable benefits for public-sector employees above the threshold. In the most recent “Sunshine List” reporting located for Hamilton, Horwath’s 2025 salary was reported at $212,763 (taxable benefits not specified in the cited item).

Separately, City Hall’s own remuneration reporting (under Ontario’s municipal rules) can show a broader cash picture than the Sunshine List alone, because elected officials may receive additional remuneration for appointments to boards/agencies. This can easily add an additional $50,000.00 to the overall renumeration number.

This compensation structure can affect campaigns in two opposing ways. First, challengers may treat a ~$200k+ mayoral salary (and the possibility of additional board remuneration) as evidence of a “professional political class,” using it to sharpen “value-for-money” messaging: taxpayers paying more while feeling services are worse.

Second, the salary can backfire as an attack line if voters interpret “pay-cut” rhetoric as performative or distracting from core issues (housing supply, public safety, infrastructure), especially given the mayor’s expanded executive responsibilities under strong mayor powers. As a motivator for challengers, high, publicly disclosed pay is plausibly a mixed factor: it may attract more entrants (increasing fragmentation) while simultaneously making “I’m in it for the job” accusations easier for opponents and journalists to surface.

The potential Horwath-Loomis rematch as a predominant theme in the upcoming election is haunted by the presence of additional challengers, increasing uncertainty: Cooper could meaningfully split a change-oriented, fiscally conservative vote (helping Horwath), while Gillespie could siphon progressive or protest support depending on how Horwath positions her record on housing, safety, and affordability (helping Loomis).

With 2022 decided by 1,663 votes, turnout shocks (especially among renters vs. homeowners, and mountain/suburban vs. inner-city voters) could be decisive; detailed, current demographic and geographic support patterns for 2026 remain unspecified absent fresh polling and ward-level campaign data.

It’s early and anything can happen. The Hamiltonian also points out that signalling that you are running for office, and actually registering to run for that office, are not the same thing. Come registration, we will see who’s in.

In the interim, feel free to browse the following potential candidates:

Andrea Horwath (Interview not available, as she declined at this time)

Keanin Loomis (click here)

Rob Cooper (click here)

Scarlett Gillespie (click here)

Derek Cordeau (click here)