Andrea Horwath

She led the Ontario New Democratic Party from 2009 to 2022 and sat in the Ontario legislature from 2004 to 2022. She is seeking a second term as mayor, the incumbent candidate for mayor of Hamilton in the 2026 municipal election.

Career

Horwath holds a BA from McMaster University and worked in literacy training, legal-aid advocacy and community organising. She sat on Hamilton city council for Ward 2 from 1997 to 2004, then as an NDP member of the provincial legislature for Hamilton East (2004 to 2007) and Hamilton Centre (2007 to 2022). She won the party leadership in 2009 and led it to Official Opposition status in 2018. After the NDP lost nine seats in 2022 she resigned as leader. That October she won the Hamilton mayoral race with 41.7 per cent, narrowly ahead of Keanin Loomis.

Positions

As NDP leader she campaigned in 2018 on universal pharmacare, dental coverage and childcare, and on returning Hydro One to public ownership; the 2022 platform proposed higher taxes on high earners and businesses to fund social programmes. As mayor she moved in 2024 to make the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation a municipal holiday. Wikipedia reports that criticism of her term has centred on infrastructure management, homelessness and stalled economic growth. She announced in July 2025 that she would run again and is registered for the 2026 race.

Summarised automatically from the linked sources. Wikipedia · Wikipedia · Wikipedia

Photo: Joey Coleman, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons (cropped)