Keanin Loomis, former President and CEO of the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce and 2022 Hamilton mayoral candidate, officially announced on Feb. 25 that he will be running for mayor once again this October.
Municipal elections across Ontario will be held on Oct. 26, 2026.
Loomis will seek to unseat Hamilton Mayor Andrea Horwath in a rematch of the 2022 election, which saw him lose out by just 1.17 per cent of the vote (57,553 votes compared to Horwath’s 59,216).
Loomis announced his intention to run outside of the Westdale Theatre, where Loomis was speaking at an event held by Hamilton Third Age Learning.
Loomis told reporters, “Over the last three years, we haven’t seen the leadership, the discipline, or the urgency needed to move Hamilton forward, and because of it, our city is in worse shape now than when I last ran.”
“Day in and day out, our Mayor is demonstrating that she just doesn’t have the competency to be doing this job. It’s costing us wasted taxpayer dollars, it’s costing us our reputation – Hamilton’s reputation is in shambles – and it’s costing us opportunity,” he continued.
After the mayoral election, Loomis joined the Ontario Chamber of Commerce as Vice President of Member Services in February 2023 but then left to become the President and CEO of the Canadian Institute of Steel Construction in June 2024.
Loomis says he will be leaving that position in June to run for mayor.
Prospective candidates can officially register to run and start campaigning on May 1.
Horwath has already announced that she will be running again, but she appears to be entering the race in a vulnerable position, according to a Liaison Strategies poll that was released in October.
The poll surveyed 800 Hamilton voters and asked for their preferred mayoral candidate between Horwath, Loomis, and former Member of Parliament and City Councillor Chad Collins.
The survey suggested that 38 per cent would vote for Loomis, 33 per cent would vote for Horwath, 9 per cent would vote for Collins, two per cent would vote for someone else, and 19 per cent were undecided.
Loomis was born in Oswego, New York, which Merulla indicates is an issue, considering the current geopolitical climate.
Loomis met his future wife at the University of Waterloo, moved to Hamilton in 2009, and became a Canadian citizen in 2015.
Loomis’ 2022 campaign was supported by several prominent left-wingers including Graham Crawford, who co-founded IELECT Hamilton in 2021, podcaster Laura Babcock, and former Liberal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna.
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.
