Election Finances
Well friends, the financial statements from the election have finally been released. They are - for many candidates - an absolute mess! Many people submitted handwritten scribbles on a blank page with absolutely no receipts or itemized expenses, and lots were incredibly vague in their donations. Crazy to think how many of these folks are business owners! Mine was among the most detailed. That isn’t bragging - you can check this claim and everything else here:
https://www.medicinehat.ca/government-city-hall/election-2025/election-results/
I’m a lifelong data geek, so of course I put together a colour-coded summary with conditional formatting to give a bit of a visual one-page summary. It’s posted below. As I said, some expenses are vague so it was difficult to categorize them. Also, the Medicine Hat News did a great breakdown that can be found here:
I have a few key takeaways that I want to muse about, but I also want to talk about the “intangibles” that I think ultimately are what get people elected in this town. Here’s where I need to put a disclaimer: I am in no way bitter, and this isn’t meant to be personal. I had an absolutely wonderful time campaigning, met some incredible people, and I now call many of the successful and unsuccessful candidates friends. I was also given the opportunity to learn about lots of aspects of what makes our city amazing, and I am forever grateful for that. I’m going to try to stay with facts where I mention other candidates, and will be clear when I’m adding an opinion.
Alan Rose & Troy Wason spent drastically more money as a $ spend per vote equation than anyone else, relative to their competitors - $13.48 and $6.83 respectively. For Alan that’s roughly $3 per vote more than his closest competitor (Drew Barnes at $10.48), and for Troy that’s roughly $4 per vote more (Gordon Cowan at $2.87). The total spend is interesting, and seems to be the closest correlation to winning vs doing very poorly.
There are a few outliers, but for Council, 6 of the 8 successful candidates spent drastically more than average in total, and 9 of the bottom 10 candidates spent drastically less. The middle was mostly a mix. Where the correlation stops entirely is when you break it down as $ spend per vote, as can be seen in my breakdown. The average $ spend per vote for Councillor was $1.48 Dan Reynish is very much the outlier. IN MY OPINION, Dan was successful because he read the news for 7 years and trades on his media-trained voice and general affability. He spent $0, collected $0, and registered very late in the race, so he was obviously very sure of his name recognition. I think he’ll be able to be re-elected on that alone as many times as he wants, because he hasn’t signalled a strong position on any issue and has so far voted entirely with the pack on every decision.
The average $ spend per vote for Mayor was $6.18 but the range is much more extreme. Drew Barnes spending over $50k and Mark Fisher spending zero is a wild swing, but so is their vote tally. Like Micheal Starner last year, Fisher was a virtual non-factor. Andy McGrogan clearly had a significant amount of support from a donation perspective, and drastically outspent Samraj and Mayor Clark both in total and as a $ spend per vote function. Alan Rose is the major outlier here. While he was outspent by Barnes & McGrogan, his $ spent per vote is very high, as mentioned. He also made a significant personal contribution and was mostly funded by family. His expenses aren’t terribly well itemized, but do show a large spend on both advertising and signage.
Barnes deserves a bit of a separate mention here. I actually was fairly sure he was going to win once he announced his long-rumoured intent to run. I met him several times, and found him to be a very affable and kind person. While we don’t have much of anything in common politically and I was highly critical of his policy and positions, I find him likeable. So again, not taking a personal shot here. Buuuuut, he spent more than 1/3 of his budget on salaries for two consulting / strategist firms - $13,125 to Bad Land Strategies and $7,875 to Michaela Frey Consulting. I don’t know definitively if this is just two individuals, but that’s my assumption. Bad Land Strategies is James Finkbeiner and two partners. James worked extremely hard for Drew and again despite being essentially politically opposite, I found him quite insightful and easy to chat with at public events. I do wonder, however, if Barnes’ donors knew that almost 40% ($21,000) of their money would go to salaries? As far as I can tell, Barnes was the only candidate to pay salaries to anyone.
I also think it’s important to note some of the common donors I saw while pouring through all of these reports. I’m sure there are some I missed, but here’s who seemed to pop up the most:
Riverridge Assets / Holdings
Big Marble Farms
Sun City Hotels
Yuill Family
Stark Family
Brad Isfield
Beck Family (EBT)
Smith Family (Smith Group)
Rolling Acres Greenhouses
Vanshaw Enterprises
Craig Elder
Wedding Star
Dan Hein
Bob Wanner
I’m not making any sort of comment or assumption about these folks’ motivations for donating, nor am I insinuating anything inappropriate or untoward. Again, just stating facts as I see them.
So, more about the lack of correlations. Spending a lot of money on signs didn’t automatically mean success, which is contrary to the sage wisdom I received (and I’d imagine others did too) when I first started. Ditto for advertising. And while it’s much more difficult to quantify, I also believe (IN MY OPINION) that door knocking / distributing flyers didn’t necessarily translate to success. I’m sure Troy won’t mind me saying it, but I know he pounded an awful lot of pavement and covered the entire city (actually the entire city - he visited something like 11,000 households) and left flyers at virtually every door in town. That didn’t equate to a win.
As a side note, I’ve become quite good friends with Troy over the past number of months. He’s one of the smartest and most insightful people I know, and is great to talk to. He remains very active in the background of lots of advocacy and several projects, some of which I’m involved in as well. I genuinely think he would have been a great choice for Council. I say this to illustrate that I’m not attacking him, but also to opine on how qualification doesn’t always mean popularity or name recognition.
On that note, let’s get to the intangibles. This will be heavily soaked in opinion. Name recognition is huge in this town. I think we can all generally agree. Some of the candidates I know who aren’t originally from here faced an uphill battle because they didn’t have a “municipal memory” that Hatters often take for granted. I am absolutely, definitely a Hatter despite spending a lot of my young adulthood living in Toronto.
Three of the successful candidates served on previous Councils. All three registered quite late and needed very little runway to get elected. Cocks and Varga spent a lot on ads; Clugston on signage. But they knew they were “known” and didn’t have to grind.
Showing up to the myriad events didn’t necessarily boost anyone, nor doing well at the forum. But again, we’re in intangibles territory, so I can’t back that up beyond knowing that I attended as many events as I possibly could, and saw candidates at most or all of them who finished all over the field. Jodi Faith, Don Knudsen, Troy, and Mike Reid were at most events and finished in the bottom 15, but so were Councillors Young, Mohammed, and Hellman who were elected by a wide margin. Many candidates were well-spoken, did lots of interviews, wrote extensively on issues, answered the dozen surveys that various organizations published, AND advertised heavily and still finished with a huge spread of vote counts.
So WHAT gets people elected? Well shit - If I knew that I’d be sitting at the horseshoe. That’s a topic for another blog, probably closer to the next election.
That was a lot of words to not really reach a conclusion,
- Adam
