Hamilton Mayor Andrea Horwath officially registered for re-election on Friday, filing her paperwork at City Hall to seek a second term.
Hamiltonians head to the polls on Oct. 26.
The deadline for candidates to register to run for mayor or councillor is Aug. 21.
“You know me. You know where I stand. And you know that when it comes to Hamilton, I will always show up, I will always do the work, and I will always fight for this city,” said Horwath in a press release launching her campaign.
“There is more work ahead. I’m running because I believe in Hamilton, I believe in what we can accomplish together, and I’m ready to keep doing the work,” she added.
The press release credits Horwath with helping to make Hamilton’s streets safer through the city’s Vision Zero plan, “advancing the LRT,” and expanding Hamilton’s shelter system.
It also claims that she has put “greater transparency, accountability, and public engagement at the centre.”
Horwath’s term as mayor has been eventful.
Sixteen months after Horwath was elected, the City of Hamilton was subject to a ransomware attack in February 2024.
The city is still recovering from the attack and taxpayers are on the hook for more than $18 million in recovery spending after the city’s insurance claim was denied because they failed to follow the proper policy requirements.
The city had not fully implemented multi-factor authentication, a basic security process that requires users to provide at least two forms of identity verification to access an account or device.
An audit report by the Office of the Auditor General later determined that city staff were warned of “critical weaknesses in the city’s security posture” in a 2021 audit, three years before the cyberattack.
In August 2024, Horwath issued a Mayoral Directive to have staff begin implementing a plan for 40 tiny shelters on the city’s Barton-Tiffany lands.
Council was asked to give Grace Mater, the city’s General Manager of the Healthy and Safe Communities Department, authority to execute all agreements necessary for the project in the name of “urgency.”
MicroShelters Inc., the company chosen to procure the shelters, was only incorporated a few days after Horwath’s Mayoral Directive, and the City of Hamilton was their only customer.
The shelters were procured through an American-based company called Global Axxis, LLC, which in turn sourced them from China.
It was later revealed that the city was on the hook to pay taxes, shipping, and duties on the tiny shelters, further escalating costs, and the electrical wiring and lighting components of the shelter units did not meet Canadian standards.
Capital costs for the project ballooned well past the $2.8 million budget estimate to $7.9 million.
Another report was released by the Auditor General, who determined that “the imperative of urgency overrode the importance of due diligence and good governance.”
The Auditor General’s office also reportedly found “no evidence of any organized search” for vendors.
Other candidates for mayor include Keanin Loomis, who lost out to Horwath in 2022 with 40.5 per cent of the vote compared to Horwath’s 41.7 per cent, and current Ward 8 Councillor and chartered professional accountant Rob Cooper.
Scarlett Gillespie, Ejaz Butt, Pamela Mitchell, Sasha Austin, Nathalie Xian Yi Yan, and Kevin Walker are also running.
Based in Hamilton, he reaches hundreds of thousands of people monthly on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. He has been published in The Hamilton Spectator, Stoney Creek News, and Bay Observer. He has also been a segment host with Cable 14 Hamilton. In 2017, he received the Chancellor Full Tuition Scholarship from the University of Ottawa (BA, 2022). He has also received the Governor General’s Academic Medal. He formerly worked in a non-partisan role on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
