Landslide victory for Paterson

Kingston’s incumbent mayor Bryan Paterson was handed a landslide victory on Monday, October 22nd, winning the seat with substantially more votes than all three of the other candidates combined.

Of 34,529 votes cast in the city, Paterson earned 23,708 of them, or about 69%. The nearest competitor, Vicki Schmolka, earned 7,545 votes, or nearly 22%, while Rob Matheson earned 2,529 votes, or 7.36%. 564 Kingstonians, or 1.64%, voted for Eric Lee.

In this election, Paterson nearly doubled the number of votes he earned in the 2014 election, where he received 13,577 votes out of the 35,856 recorded.

“I’m proud of the campaign we ran and I have no regrets,” said Paterson cautiously, when asked how he felt at Memorial Hall as the votes started to come in early in the election night. As the results continued to pour in and the wide margin continued to be evident, Paterson moved to join a large group of supporters at Renaissance Event Venue on Queen St. There, he was met with a roaringly upbeat crowd as he entered.

The wide margin seemed to be a clear message from voters that they would like Paterson to continue on the path he had laid out over the previous four years. “The voters of Kingston have clearly said, they want to embrace growth, we want to seize opportunities, and we want to move forward and realize our potential and build our community,” he said, addressing the crowd at Renaissance, “and I’m thrilled to champion that, and I’m excited to lead a new council with a number of new faces to do that.”