Pete Fry has been elected mayor of Vancouver, becoming the first Green Party member to hold the office and ending Ken Sim's tenure at city hall, according to the Vancouver Sun. The result came from early counting on Saturday night, with 66 of 149 voting places reporting.
At that stage Fry held 51,922 votes against 36,787 for Sim, the Vancouver Sun reported. Sim called Fry to concede around the time those figures were released, and Fry then addressed supporters at the Green Party gathering in downtown Vancouver.
Why it matters
The outcome marks a shift in the balance of power at Vancouver city hall. In the 2022 election, ABC Vancouver, Sim's centre-right party, took seven of the ten council seats. The early count this time pointed to a council with a different, more left-leaning composition.
The mayoral race itself was not close in the early returns. Colleen Hardwick of TEAM for a Livable Vancouver sat a distant third, with Kareem Allam of the Vancouver Liberals and Rebecca Bligh of Vote Vancouver further back, according to the Vancouver Sun.
Council and other races take shape
The council contest was still developing while Fry delivered his victory speech. Early results showed only two of ABC's nine council candidates inside the top ten: incumbent Coun. Mike Klassen and newcomer Joyce Gillespie.
Incumbent COPE Coun. Sean Orr was leading the council race in the early count. Three other COPE candidates, three Greens and incumbent OneCity Coun. Lucy Maloney filled out the remaining top-ten positions, the Vancouver Sun reported.
Three sitting ABC councillors — Peter Meiszner, Lisa Dominato and Sarah Kirby-Yung — were running 11th, 12th and 13th at that point.
The pattern extended to the park board and school board. No ABC candidates appeared in the top seven places for the seven park board seats, or in the top nine for the school board seats, in the early results. Candidates from COPE, OneCity and the Greens led those races instead, according to the Vancouver Sun.
What to watch
Counting continues across the remaining voting places, and the final composition of council, park board and school board will depend on those later results.
