What Halifax's new-look council says about incumbent power

Ballots have been counted since Saturday’s final voting day, and the results show a major makeover for the regional municipality. “Halifax council gets face lift following municipal election” is the CityNews headline; there are 17 seats for elected representatives around the council table—16 councillors plus the mayor—and eight of them are going to be filled by new faces. That’s nearly half of council.

The newbies are the mayor (Andy Fillmore) and councillors for Districts 7, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16 (Laura White, Virginia Hinch, Janet Steele, Nancy Hartling, John A. Young, Billy Gillis and Jean St-Amand respectively). They’ll be joining these incumbent familiar names who are returning to council: Cathy Deagle Gammon, David Hendsbee, Becky Kent, Trish Purdy, Sam Austin, Tony Mancini, Shawn Cleary, Kathryn Morse and Patty Cuttell. (Technically the results are unofficial as of our publication time, but the city has announced them. We will update this story as necessary when the results are certified, which is supposed to happen within three days of the election.)

Council used to have 24 seats until the province downsized it in 2011. With elections slated to happen every four years in the HRM, there have now been four elections under the 17-member setup, and 2024’s eight rookies winning is a record high. The 2020 election had seven rookies—that’s including the return of former councillor Kent after a hiatus from city politics to be a provincial MLA—and 2016 had six (again, that counts ex-councillor Steve Streatch winning his way back to the table). In 2012, the first election with the smaller council, several incumbents ran against each other, making it even harder for non-incumbents to break through, and only four of the 17 council members were new.

Compared to that 2012 result, the eight council novices elected in 2024 suggest the voting public has developed an appetite for major change. This could be exciting! But while we’re waiting for the revolution to begin, let’s dig into the results a bit more.

The race for any seat in any election can be boiled down to a binary about the person who held that seat before the election: The incumbent is either running again, or they’re not running. If the incumbent’s not running, that’s known as a vacant or open seat—open for some new candidate to take over without the natural advantages of incumbency tilting the playing field.

Similarly, the result of any vote can be summed up in one of three ways, all of them respecting incumbency’s outsize power. First and most common is the incumbent wins. Then there are the open seats, where the critical factor is the incumbent didn’t run. Finally come the rare cases of the incumbent losing to a challenger.

The incumbent losing, the established power getting overthrown—that’s a good barometer of revolutionary sentiment. So how many incumbents were deposed this election? Just two. In District 12 Janet Steele beat one-term councillor Iona Stoddard by a sizeable 1,000 votes, and District 15’s one-term councillor Paul Russell lost to Billy Gillis by 223 votes.

Two incumbents also lost in the 2020 election. And in 2016. *And* 2012. This is hardly a call to arms. The wind has been blowing the exact same way in Halifax for more than 10 years.

That’s not to say council is unchanging, or to deny the amount of new blood coming onto council now. It’s just that most of the change we get comes at the whim of the incumbents, confirming their power even as they relinquish it. This year was special because so many council members decided not to run again compared to previous elections. There were six open seats heading into Saturday’s vote, another record high going back to 2012 (remember that mayor Savage’s retirement created not just one open seat for the mayoralty, but two more thanks to councillors Pamela Lovelace and Waye Mason deciding to give up their seats to go for the big chair).

The change agent of retirement may not be revolutionary, but it works pretty well. Say 94.1% of the time. From that 2012 election, 16 out of 17 council seats have turned over at least once. The holdout is District 2, which has been held by David Hendsbee since before council got shrunk by the province. Hendsbee was re-elected yet again on Saturday, beating challenger Will Gilligan by 524 votes.

But despite evidence to the contrary, the job of mayor or councillor is not to get elected a first time then cruise along to the retirement of your choosing. The Halifax of 2024 is a dynamic, growing city, with problems that need solving and opportunities that need to be found—complacent stewardship isn’t enough anymore. While the election results don’t show the electorate demanding revolution, the fact remains that council got revolutionized this election. If that’s not enough of a mandate for anyone at the council table to get on with the work of leading the city, don’t forget the voters will be getting rid of two of you next time around.