Spadafora says political run was two decades in the making
For Mike Spadafora, sitting around the city council horseshoe will be an extension of his community and hockey life in Hamilton.
For years, he was known as being a junior hockey manager and is the president of the Hamilton Kilty B's Junior Hockey Club. But for a long time, he says he wanted to be involved with the community beyond the rink.
There's been years of this, of community engagement, of community involvement and being around people from every ward in the city through sports," said the newly elected Ward 14 councillor. Through all these organizations that I've been a part of, I've got to meet many great people. So I have been trying to further my community engagement, especially into politics. But I don't think I can pinpoint one thing or two things that made me want to run for office.
It's been 20 years in the making."
Although Spadafora was eyeing a run for city council for a while, his first electoral foray came in June when he ran for Doug Ford's Progressive Conservative Party as a candidate in Hamilton Mountain.
That attempt was not successful, and Spadafora lost to NDP MPP Monique Taylor. So he went back to his original plan to try and win a city council seat.
Spadafora succeeded this time, but only just. He won Ward 14 on Monday night by a mere 79 votes over Kojo Damptey, the former executive director of the Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion.
Damptey said he is looking at options for a recount, and has raised issues about voters having problems with mail-in ballots and a Spadafora robocall in the campaign's final week that said he had the endorsement of outgoing mayor Fred Eisenberger.
Eisenberger has told The Spectator he did not endorse Spadafora.
Spadafora, who says he has a quote of support from Eisenberger but no paperwork to that to effect, remains focused on assuming his new duties when the new council sits next month.
That means, he said, scaling back on some of his other work in the community where necessary and learning the ropes at city hall.
It's a learning process for everybody. I'm a new councillor. Yeah, as are many other ones. So I think there's going to be a lot of new happening for everybody," he said. I'm hoping that once that starts I can learn the landscape and start doing the job."
Grant LaFleche is an investigative reporter with The Spectator. Reach him via email: glafleche@torstar.ca