In Ward 20, Adam Vaughan easily won re-election with 74 per cent of the vote. Mike Yen, whose platform was very similar to Mayor-elect Rob Ford, and whose message of “Stop the War on Fun” resonated with local fraternities and bars, including the Brunswick House, came in a distant second with 3,601 votes. Dean Maher, Roman Polochansky and Ken Osadchuck picked up 6, 2, and 1 per cent of the vote, respectively.
In Ward 18 (Davenport), Ana Bailao beat out Adam Giambrone’s former assistant Kevin Beaulieau by over a thousand votes, with Frank De Jong coming in third place.
In Joe Pantalone’s old ward, 19,which had nine candidates facing off, Mike Layton, environmentalist and son of NDP leader Jack Layton, won easily. He doubled his nearest competitor, executive director of the Chinese Canadian National Council Karen Sun, in number of votes. Sportscaster Sean McCormick came in third place.
Incumbent Joe Mihevc (Ward 21, St. Paul’s) was re-elected with 56 per cent of the vote. The rest of the voters mainly went with entrepreneur Shimmy Posen, who got 5,000 votes. His twitter status says he is now going back to Osgoode Law School.
In Parkdale-High Park (Ward 14), the seat went back to the incumbent Gord Perks, who captured 52 per cent of the vote. His nearest competitors, Ryan Hobson and Michael Erickson, took in numbers in the high and mid 2,000s, respectively.
Ward 27, left wide-open when Kyle Rae announced he was retiring, ended up being the most competitive council race, with 15 candidates. The winner, community activist and art gallery owner Kristyn Wong-Tam, beat her closest rival, former police officer Ken Chan, by just two percentage points (28 and 26 per cent, respectively).
In the public school board trustee race, Parkdale-High Park incumbent Irene Atkinson got 70 per cent of the vote, despite conflict of interest allegations directed at her. In Davenport, Maria Rodrigues secured her re-election with 54 per cent of the vote. Ward 10 saw incumbent Chris Bolton take 66 per cent of the vote to defeat his only competitor, Michael Sims, who took home 9,000 votes.
The one major defeat in our coverage area was in the race for catholic school board trustee. Catherine LeBlanc-Miller (Ward 9) was defeated by her lone rival Jo-Ann Davis. Despite the fact that Davis failed to show up to the one catholic trustee debate in the ward, she defeated LeBlanc-Miller with 54 per cent of the vote. LeBlanc-Miller was the chair of the scandal-ridden Catholic school board.
Barbara Poplawski (Ward 10), recently exonerated in a conflict-of-interest case, was voted back in with 34 per cent of the vote.
We all know how the mayoral race shaped up for the top three candidates. The Gleaner would like to remind our readers that many other people ran for this position. There were too many to list here, but we’d like to give honourable mentions to perennial mayoral candidate Kevin Clarke who got 1,400 votes, former Ward 19 candidate Himy Syed who got a lot of media support, and Annex resident Howard Gomberg, who rapped his way to 472 votes. Congratulations to all of the winners, and all of those who ran.