The race for mayor: Get to know Keanin Loomis

Editor's note: This is the second in a series of three profiles on Hamilton's leading mayoral candidates - Bob Bratina, Keanin Loomis and Andrea Horwath.

Keanin Loomis looked like he was running on fumes at the end of a long day of mayoral campaigning - until a couple of residents at his town hall" event in Ancaster put a grin on his face.

Cuffs rolled up and microphone in hand, he spoke enthusiastically but sometimes stumbled over words. At one point the microphone stopped working. With a shrug, Loomis raised his voice to reach the back of a full house at Boston Pizza on Wilson Street.

Then his face lit up.

Ancaster resident Amber had a question about housing and protecting farmland - but prefaced it with a pointed observation. Like you, I'm also a transplant to Hamilton," she said, earning a few knowing chuckles from the crowd. Another town hall visitor piped up to announce she was a newcomer, too - several decades ago.

Those tongue-in-cheek voters were riffing on an exchange during a televised Cable 14 debate, co-hosted by The Spectator, that may come to define the final leg of the 47-year-old's campaign for Hamilton council's top job.

It started with Andrea Horwath, Hamilton's best-known NDP politician before she stepped down to run for mayor, questioning where Loomis found the chutzpah" to run for mayor after spending only a couple of years" in Hamilton running a small organization."

A couple of years" is actually 13 for Loomis, who moved to Hamilton with his wife, Trish, in 2009 after the then-lawyer lost his job in Washington, D.C., in the wake of the financial crisis. The small organization" he ran for nine years is Hamilton's chamber of commerce, which represents 1,000 businesses and organizations that employ 75,000-plus workers.

In the moment, Loomis called the characterization disrespectful" to residents who have adopted Hamilton as home.

He - and plenty of other people - have said a lot more about it since.

The idea that you're not born and raised here so you can't contribute in this way? I think that was incredibly offensive to a huge portion of the city," a miffed-sounding Loomis said later. (Horwath, for her part, has called that interpretation of her question ugly politics," arguing she was drawing a comparison to her lifelong understanding" of Hamilton and experience in government.)

However you view the exchange, it became a hot topic" for some voters - and maybe a gift to Loomis, said Hamilton resident Chris Erl, a Toronto Metropolitan University academic with research interests in municipal politics.

Erl noted the former chamber boss must play catch-up in the name recognition race and is trying to position himself as an experienced outsider" at a time when voters are outraged by city hall secrecy and scandals like Sewergate. A lot of folks are angry with politics as usual," he said.

Loomis' campaign has tried to capitalize on the exchange, referencing it in videos and using it to differentiate himself as a business-savvy but progressive candidate - even if some critics argue with those bona fides.

More than a swanky suit

The dust-up was a new opportunity for Loomis to fill in the blanks for residents who might only know him - if they knew him at all - as a champion for business in a swanky suit.

Before he was a snappy dresser in boardrooms, Loomis was the son of a single mom navigating hard times by living with grandparents or in low-cost rental homes around Fulton, N.Y.

It's a history he said stays in the back of his mind when considering Hamilton's housing crisis.

His mother remarried a Canadian thanks to a shared love of racing at the Oswego Speedway, sending the family permanently across the border when Loomis was 12.

Later he was a poli-sci dork" at the University of Waterloo - where he met wife Trish - a law student in Virginia and eventual lawyer in Washington, D.C.

A lost job and disillusionment with U.S. politics sent him to the first place I really felt was home."

His campaign has highlighted some of that history in videos, including an emotional story by Trish, who recalled the then-jobless couple moving into her parents' east Mountain basement to rebuild their lives in 2009.

In the video, she tells a crowd she once thought the city was a temporary stop" until she realized the big Hamilton cheerleader" in her family had other plans. I may have brought Keanin to Hamilton, but he made me fall in love with Hamilton."

You can see that early enthusiasm for the city - and even then, a desire to lead - in an opinion piece Loomis wrote for online opinion site Raise the Hammer when he first arrived back in 2009.

Hamilton doesn't get the recognition it deserves, even from many of its own citizens," wrote the still-jobless newcomer, who nonetheless expressed hope he would play a role in helping Hamilton craft a new image."

He started networking early in local economic development circles, seeking advice from the likes of city urban renewal guru Glen Norton, and ended up scoring a job with the newly formed Innovation Factory business incubator. In that role, he first teamed up with the chamber of commerce to co-create the popular Lion's Lair contest for entrepreneurs to vie for a $100,000 startup prize.

An unpolitician?

In conversation, Loomis appears to relish the role of unpolitician." He was less practised and guarded in conversation with The Spec's editorial board, at one point admitting he finds governance questions really sexy" and emphasizing his belief voters want real change" career politicians cannot offer.

He's not afraid to emphasize his relative newcomer status, eagerly sharing his first reaction to seeing five-lane, one-way Main Street - What the hell is that?"

Loomis also declared his legal background would have allowed him to recognize and ignore the really terrible" legal advice that convinced a past Hamilton council to keep secret the bombshell details about a four-year, 24-billion-litre sewage spill.

He repeatedly contrasts what he sees as his opponents partisan baggage" with his years as a work-with-anyone voice of business" for Hamilton's chamber of commerce.

But being the so-called voice of business can be a double-edged sword.

Erl said Loomis will have to prove to some skeptical voters that he is not too close to developers and the business interests he once lobbied for as chamber head and also as a board member of the Hamilton-Oshawa Port Authority.

Some transit advocates are wary of his past statements suggesting he is open to exploring various operation models for Hamilton's planned light-rail transit project - even though a private operator is a non-starter for the local transit union and its supporters.

He has also been asked to account for the chamber's early backing for urban boundary expansion and its opposition to a provincial bill in 2018 that pitched fast-tracking increases to minimum wage.

Loomis has told The Spec he would gladly support an HSR-run train if it proves, via the project bidding process, the best outcome for taxpayers." He has also said some of his personal positions as a mayoral candidate differ from those he espoused on behalf of the chamber, noting he now backs freezing the urban boundary.

We were never against raising the minimum wage," he added in an interview, arguing instead the chamber opposed the speed of the proposed change. That (bill) was the province ... playing with livelihoods to try to win an election. I had an obligation to represent the concerns of our members."

Loomis has argued he has the ear of politicians of all stripes, pointing as an example to his role in resurrecting Hamilton's 14-kilometre LRT. That political hot potato was cancelled in 2019 by Ontario but saved last year by a federal-provincial partnership that boosted capital funding to $3.4 billion.

Former federal infrastructure minister Catherine McKenna backs him on the collaboration claim.

Look at all the different people he helped bring together on LRT," said McKenna, who is now running a climate-focused non-governmental organization. He was able to work with the province - which to be honest, wasn't always easy ... That's what I like about Keanin, he's not a lot of drama, he just does the work."

McKenna has publicly endorsed Loomis, whom she first met because he lives next to her parents in Hamilton.

A fellow lawyer by training, McKenna pointed out she was elected MP and appointed a cabinet minister without previously holding elected office. Sometimes ... you need people who know politics but aren't necessarily of politics originally."

Not everyone was a fan of Loomis' style of collaboration.

In 2019, the chamber helped put together a report on the challenges involved in navigating Hamilton's planning and building approvals process, featuring interviews with developers, architects and businesses.

Architect Bill Curran was excited at the time. He and some of his clients contributed pointed comments and criticisms - then waited. And waited.

Eventually, a second draft of the report, circulated through the city for feedback, came back with particularly damning and very blunt" comments removed. To date, no version of the report has been published.

Curran said he was shocked the Loomis-led chamber allowed municipal staff to edit" a report he argued was meant to hold the city to account. He feels Loomis later buried" the document and called it a huge waste of time and effort on a critical issue."

For his part, Loomis said the report ended up on the back burner when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and a majority of his board members backed the decision to not throw bombs" at the city at that time.

But he argued it wasn't a waste of time, either. We sat down with people at the city and said, Let's work through some of these issues.'"

Still, Loomis has run his campaign on the need for a culture change" at city hall as well as greater efforts to clear the red tape" - a major recommendation in the unpublished report.

A radical moderate

Of his time as head of the chamber, Loomis has said he is proud of modernizing" the 177-year-old business group and pursuing a more progressive agenda. That included publicly supporting the basic income pilot in Hamilton and becoming the first chamber in Canada to become a living wage" employer.

Mary Lou Tanner, an urban planner and Loomis' campaign manager, recalls meeting him for the first time on a Hamilton Community Foundation learning tour" of LRT projects in Minneapolis and St. Paul back in 2018.

The chamber boss was interested in learning how to help businesses survive long-term LRT construction.

But I was more impressed with his understanding of the importance of building housing along the LRT," Tanner said of the candidate who aims to facilitate the building of 50,000 new residential units over a decade. He is one of the few business leaders I've met who has that depth of understanding."

The active social media user, who once labelled himself a radical moderate" on his Twitter bio, calls bringing progressive hero, lawyer and former U.S. first lady Michelle Obama to Hamilton the biggest event in the chamber's history."

But it turns out that event also spurred criticism of the chamber - and Loomis in particular.

A well-read opinion piece in The Spec by YWCA director of operations Medora Uppal in 2019 thanked the chamber for its effort to bring Obama to town - but also asked why no local women were asked to participate.

The chamber later responded online to say event producers, not the chamber, chose the male moderator.

Regardless, the op-ed upset Loomis, who called YWCA head Denise Christopherson to complain and later showed up at her office in person, spurring an argument and complaint to the chamber board chair.

Christopherson, a friend and supporter of competing mayoral candidate Horwath, did not bring the incident to the attention of The Spec and wanted to make clear she had not planned to do so.

But she confirmed the out of left field" confrontation happened, recalling Loomis showed up quite agitated and angry" about the article. Christopherson said her own staff at the women's social services agency felt uncomfortable as a result and she reached out to the chamber board for some assurances that would never happen again."

Christopherson said she backed Uppal's right as a citizen to express her own opinion and told Loomis she agreed with the question posed by the piece. I challenged back: Why were there no women on stage?'"

Her recollection of Loomis' answer was that there were no women available who could hold the audience."

When asked about the incident, Loomis said he regrets the interaction but denied using those words. In retrospect, I wouldn't have done what I did, but it was a good lesson to learn," he said in an interview.

Loomis said he was upset on behalf of his chamber staff, who took the opinion piece as a bit of a gut punch" after months of work to pull off the visit. Both Christopherson and Loomis agree he later offered an apology, which was accepted.

But is the episode an example of a prospective mayor being too thin-skinned? The Spec also asked a similar question of mayoral candidate Bratina, who has had past heated exchanges with constituents.

Loomis called the incident an opportunity for personal growth," but also an anomaly.

I understand there is going to be criticism," he said.

Matthew Van Dongen is a transportation and environment reporter at The Spectator. mvandongen@thespec.com