Statement from ACORN Hamilton’s Political Action Committee on the Municipal Election

In 2021, the four chapters of Hamilton ACORN made the decision to organize leading up to the 2022 municipal election to encourage members and tenants to vote, to create a municipal platform to share with candidates, allies, and community members, and to identify candidates that would champion ACORN’s campaigns.

Some highlights include:

• Held 8 municipal election committee meetings
• Sent a survey to ward and mayoral candidates to see where they stood on the issues ACORN members want to see prioritized. In total 30 completed surveys were received, 28 from ward candidates and 2 from mayoral candidates.
• When deciding who to endorse, if anyone, in each race ACORN’s political action committee reviewed all the survey responses and took into consideration the candidates’ support of ACORN’s campaigns over the last four years. ACORN’s PAC endorsed nine candidates (eight Councillors and one Mayor)
• Organized 6 Political Action Committee canvasses to support APAC-endorsed candidates
• Phone banked, emailed and texted over 7,000 ACORN members with voting information and APAC endorsements
• Organized a renoviction walking tour to bring attention to the renoviction and demoviction crisis and invited candidates to attend to learn about the campaign
• Wrote an opinion piece with allies on Why Tenants Need to Vote

Election Results

APAC is excited to see 6 of our 9 endorsed candidates elected:

• Ward 1: Maureen Wilson
• Ward 2: Cameron Kroetsch
• Ward 3: Nrinder Nann
• Ward 12: Craig Cassar
• Ward 13: Alex Wilson
• Mayor: Andrea Horwath

We would also like to thank APAC endorsed candidates Eric Tuck, Lynda Lukasik and Kojo Damptey (asking for a recount), who unfortunately did not win their races but supported ACORN’s municipal platform, attended both our Beat the Heat Rally and our Renoviction Walking Tour, and focused their campaigns on progressive change for Hamilton.

What’s Next?

ACORN looks forward to working with the next term of Council and hopes that together we will be able to pass bold pro-tenant policies to protect tenants from substandard housing, displacement, and extreme heat, to see the creation of adequate amounts of deeply affordable housing on private and public land, and to tackle the digital divide.

ACORN’s Political Action Committee