Nominations close at 2pm this Friday (21 August) for the elections to Newmarket Council on 26 October 2026. 
As I tap this out, there will be elections in five of the seven wards and for the Deputy Mayor. It looks like Mayor John Taylor, Bob Kwapis (Ward 5) and Christina Bisanz (Ward 7) will all be acclaimed and will be returned unopposed.
Why is there so little interest in municipal elections?
Pitiful turnout
At the last election in 2022, when I ran unsuccessfully against the incumbent Deputy Mayor Tom Vegh, the turnout was a pitiful 24.8%. But we were no worse than many others in Ontario.
The municipalities with populations over 50,000 that had the lowest voter turnout are shown in the table (right).
Where are the Political Parties?
Political parties are forbidden by Statute to contest municipal elections in Ontario. The sole exception is Toronto but there are important caveats. Even so, everyone stands as an independent. (But see note below.)
Of course, candidates don’t leave their politics at the door when they run for election to their local council and because they all run as “independents” it is difficult for the voters to get a handle on where they are coming from. Party colours and Party labels give voters an easy way to place candidates on the ideological spectrum.
Newmarket’s Mayor John Taylor ran for the Liberals in the 2003 Provincial Election in York North against the PC incumbent Julia Munro and lost by 3,463 votes. Ward 7 councillor Christina Bisanz ran for the Liberals in Newmarket Aurora in 2007 narrowing losing by 1,355 to the incumbent PC MPP, Frank Klees. She ran again, unsuccessfully, in 2011. Ward 3 councillor Jane Twinney ran for the Progressive Conservatives in the 2014 Provincial Election and Tom Vegh tried to get into Queen’s Park as a Progressive Conservative but wasn’t selected as the Party's candidate. On 5 December 2016 Vegh told residents in Ward 1 that he was ready for a bigger challenge. (see graphic right)
Newmarket’s former Mayor, Tony Van Bynen, was forever droning on about being "steadfastly bi-partisan" but as soon as he retired he joined the Liberals and was selected from a shortlist of one and elected as the Liberal MP for Newmarket Aurora.
Institutional memory
At their best, Parties provide an institutional memory, recalling significant political events that most of us forget after a few weeks. They provide campaign finance and a ready-made band of volunteers to help in the campaign. (At their worst, they corruptly legitimise campaigns and elections that can be bought through signing up thousands of new Party members who are committed only to a particular candidate and not to the Party.)
Fighting an election as an independent costs money and for many excellent aspiring candidates this can be a real disincentive.
Election spending shouldn't be an Arms Race
In the 2022 Newmarket Election Tom Vegh spent $27,312 against my $7,292, a difference of $20,000 and approximately 3.75 times greater than my spend.
I took the view that running for election shouldn’t be an arms race and I did everything I could to minimise my spending – in retrospect a big mistake.
After the election I returned a surplus of $1,495 to the Town of Newmarket which was money I had raised for the campaign but did not spend.
Tough Call
As an “independent” taking on an incumbent can be a tough call. He or she (the incumbent) has name recognition and four years to build support in the community – backed by the Town Hall machine. The Deputy Mayor, for example, has an Executive and Community Relations Assistant who
“reviews and analyzes social media channels, as well as Committee reports and decisions and alerting the Deputy Mayor on operational or emerging issues, and initiating the action required to respond.”
The assistant’s duties are wide ranging and include:
“monitoring activities related to social media channels and recommends options to improve social media content, outreach to the community and businesses, as well as support design elements that best serves the purposes of various audiences.”
This is from the Job Description:
Non-incumbents running for election do so, almost by definition, from a standing start.
So, how do candidates break through and get their message across to the voters?
Election Debates should be a key part of every election
Personally, I believe election debates are the great equaliser and they can break though into the public’s consciousness when reported by the local media.
In 2003, for example, when John Taylor ran against the PC incumbent, Julia Munro, the ERA newspaper reported that Taylor had put in a strong debate performance and this had narrowed the gap between the two in a Conservative leaning riding.
So, debates do matter.
Unfortunately, in 2022, neither the local Chamber of Commerce here in Newmarket nor the local media organised a debate for the contested Deputy Mayor position. For me, this was incredibly frustrating. You have no idea how much time and effort I put into trying to get a debate.
Three Choices
I gave Vegh three choices of dates with an offer that he could also select the debate moderator but he simply wasn’t interested. So I organised my own. The last thing he wanted to do was defend his disgraceful practice of taking money from developers to fund his election campaigns.
Over the years, I’ve stood in many elections in the UK and there has always been a candidates’ debate. Indeed, in my many years as an MP at Westminster, I used to do three or four across the constituency during each campaign.
Here in Newmarket the whole experience of running for election without a debate left me feeling profoundly dissatisfied. It was an election where, for me at least, there was still unfinished business.
I shall be blogging on these and other themes as the election campaign gets under way.
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Note: The Ontario government confirmed in 2006 that the Municipal Elections Act did not prohibit candidates from working together or forming civic parties. This was reiterated during the 2016 legislative debate over municipal-election reform.