Voters in Hamilton’s Ward 8 (West/Central Mountain) elected Rob Cooper to City Council on Monday night.
Cooper is a Chartered Professional Accountant and Chartered Director who has also served as the Riding Association President for the Ontario PC Party in the Hamilton Mountain riding.
Unofficial results on the City of Hamilton website show that Cooper won by only 87 votes, with former City Councillor Terry Whitehead coming in second place.
Cooper finished with 1,129 votes (19.3 per cent) compared to Whitehead’s 1,042 votes (17.9 per cent).
There were 26 candidates running in the by-election, which marked the highest number of candidates in any Hamilton election race in the city’s history.
After Cooper and Whitehead, former Burlington Councillor Barry Quinn came in third with 917 votes (15.7 per cent), entrepreneur Lohifa Pogoson Acker was fourth with 806 votes (13.8 per cent), and former Hamilton Police Media Relations Officer Asuf Khokhar came in fifth with 396 votes (6.8 per cent).
Notably, former City Councillor and Hamilton Mountain NDP Member of Parliament Scott Duvall came in seventh with 322 votes (5.5 per cent).
Pogoson Acker was endorsed by the outgoing Ward 8 Councillor John-Paul Danko, who stepped aside after being elected Member of Parliament for the Liberal Party of Canada in Hamilton West – Ancaster – Dundas.
Meanwhile, Whitehead was endorsed by Ward 14 (West Mountain) City Councillor Mike Spadafora.
Cooper’s campaign slogan was “Leadership That Listens – Change That Works,” and his platform consisted of six points, which are (in order): Tackle Violent Crime, Repair and Rebuild Our Roads, End Tax Increases Exceeding Inflation, Scrap the Rain and Vacant Unit Taxes, Confront the Housing Crisis, and Expand Public Transportation.
His campaign website calls the rain tax and vacant unit taxes “unnecessary” and says that they “burden residents and slow development.”
It also says that he will confront the housing crisis by “expanding housing options and supporting affordable homes for residents.”
In regard to public transit, Cooper wants to bring GO Transit to Hamilton Mountain, specifically Mohawk College, to make it “easier for residents, students, and workers to connect.”
Cooper’s website also says that he has been a resident of Ward 8 for 22 years.
He graduated from Sherwood Secondary School in Hamilton and went to McMaster University.
He holds a Master of Business Administration and has reportedly worked as a Chief Strategy Officer, Chief Risk Officer, Internal Auditor, and in various Vice President roles at top institutions.
His resume includes positions with accounting firm Ernst & Young, Stelco, TD Bank, Manulife, McMaster University, and the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB).
Ward 8 runs east-west from Upper Wellington Street to Garth Street and north-south from the Niagara Escarpment to the hydro corridor just south of Rymal Road.
It includes Mohawk College, Chedoke Hospital, St. Joseph’s Mental Health and Resource Centre (West 5th Campus), and part of the Chedoke Rail Trail.
A total of 5,835 votes were cast in the by-election.
With a total of 27,982 electors in the ward, it means that voter turnout was 20.85 per cent.
In the 2022 municipal election in the ward, 8,482 people voted.
The by-election reportedly broke the ward record for most votes cast during advanced polls.
There were 2,320 ballots cast during advanced voting in the by-election, compared to 1,796 cast during advance polls in the 2022 municipal election.
Cooper’s inaugural City Council meeting will be on Oct. 8, and his term of office will run until Nov. 14, 2026.
The next municipal election will be held on Oct. 26, 2026.
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.
