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The City of Vancouver will have its first-ever Green mayor.
CBC News projects that Pete Fry has been elected mayor, decisively defeating incumbent mayor Ken Sim of ABC Vancouver.
As of 10:45 p.m. PCT, Fry led Sim by more than 16,000 votes.
“The biggest thank you is to the people of Vancouver, thank you for … putting your trust in me and my team here, we are not going to let you down, we love this city a lot and we are here to work for this city and to fight for this city,” Fry told supporters on Saturday.
The election marks a sharp reversal from the 2022 municipal election, when ABC swept to power, electing every single council candidate it ran.
This time, early results suggest ABC Vancouver could be reduced to two councillors with potentially no representation on the city’s park or school boards.
“Tonight the people of Vancouver, they have made their decision and while it isn’t the decision we wanted, its one we really have to respect and that’s democracy,” Sim told supporters in a concession speech Saturday night.
“Make no mistake about it, Pete has my unwavering support, I will help him any way I can so he can succeed, so Vancouver can succeed.”
Pre-election polls had suggested the race was neck and neck between Sim and Fry, after OneCity candidate William Azaroff and Cope candidate Stephanie Allen withdrew in a bid to avoid splitting the left-leaning vote.
All three parties actively campaigned against ABC, with COPE running a tag line to “evict Ken Sim.”
Sim, meanwhile, ran a campaign that included tying Fry to COPE Councillor Sean Orr, highlighting incendiary social media posts Orr had made in the past.
As mayor, Sim has faced criticism that he was too political, launching code of conduct complaints against opposition councillors, and even falsely claiming Orr had handed out drugs on Christmas day.
Sim had sought to cast the election as a referendum on public safety, adding two plebiscite questions asking the voters if they supported new bylaws to ban public drug use and if they supported adding an involuntary treatment facility at the soon to be vacant St. Paul’s Hospital campus.
Results from the plebiscite are not yet available.