Toronto Votes 2026: Nathaniel Erskine-Smith elected new councillor for Beaches-East York

By MATTHEW STEPHENS

After a political career spanning federal and provincial politics, former Beaches-East York MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith has been elected city councillor for Ward 19 Beaches-East York.

The former Liberal MP secured the seat with 46.75 per cent (21,472 votes) of the total votes, followed by Natalie Johnson with 24.36 per cent (11,187 votes) and James Dann with 11.89 per cent (5,461 votes) and Jennie Worden 8.1 per cent (3,723 votes).

Other candidates running for councillor in the ward were Kevin Morrison, Karsten Riedel, Mohammad Shabani, Adam Smith, Jeff Wahl, Devin Wilkins, Syeda Jaana Ali, Fatima Ibrahimi and Austin Vieira.

Brad Bradford, the ward’s former councillor, ran in the Toronto mayoral race and lost to Olivia Chow with 54.16 per cent (532,201) votes)of the total vote. Bradford was second with 41.11 per cent (404,013 votes).

In a media scrum at his campaign party at Royal Canadian Legion Branch 22 on Woodbine Avenue following his win, Erskine-Smith said he was looking forward to working with Mayor Olivia Chow at the municipal level.

“Olivia Chow and I have worked together in the past when I was housing minister … we set politics aside to get things done, and look, she was one of the people who picked up the phone and asked me to run,” said Erskine-Smith.

Erskine-Smith grew up in the community and attended Bowmore Elementary School and Malvern Collegiate Institute. Representing Beaches-East York federally as an MP for 10 years, Erskine-Smith was runner-up in the Ontario Liberal Party’s 2023 leadership race. He was also second in his attempt to be nominated as the Liberal candidate in the provincial riding of Scarborough Southwest in May.

Erskine-Smith announced his intention to resign as Beaches-East York MP in June and afterwards entered the race for Beaches-East York councillor just a few days before the registration deadline in late August.

When asked about his late decision to run for councillor and its impact on his relationship with Beaches-East York MPP Mary-Margaret McMahon (who endorsed council candidate James Dann in this municipal election), Erskine-Smith said he “looks forward to working with Mary-Margaret again.”

“I completely understand that I joined the race a little later in the day and so I respect that, and I look forward to working together,” Erskine Smith told Beach Metro Community News.

Now serving his constituents at the municipal level, he said addressing housing and improving transit are his top priorities as councillor.

“Across the city, we need the city building on housing, better transit, faster, more reliable transit. We need to address homelessness, public safety, big city building issues,” he said. “At the riding level, people spoke loud and clear; they want a hyper-responsive councillor to be there and listen. To solve local problems, and that’s exactly what I plan to do.”

Johnson ran a vigorous campaign but ultimately finished second with 24.4 per cent of the vote. She, her team and her supporters gathered at the Beaches Brewpub & Kitchen on Queen Street East where she addressed the crowd as the final numbers were called.

“This obviously is not the result we had hoped for, but this is what the people of Beaches-East York have chosen, and I do respect that. We wish Nate all the best in his new role as city councillor,” said Johnson. 

“This ward deserves someone who will fight for Beaches-East York and I really do hope that he could do that for all of us and advance the interests of this community.”

Before politics, Johnson was a journalist at CTV news, spending 16 years covering city hall. She says her background in reporting was something she took into the race with her.

“I spent my career listening to people as a journalist, for city issues specifically, and that’s the approach I took going into this campaign,” she stated. “We went out and we spoke to tens of thousands of people since the middle of May, quite honestly seven days a week, up to 12 hours a day.”

She thanked her campaign volunteers for their hard work over the past months.

“The message to all of you is thank you. I have been so inspired by each and every one of you throughout all of this. Honestly, It’s been a privilege of a lifetime to be able to run this campaign.”

Speaking to Beach Metro Community News, Johnson spoke about the possibility of her returning to politics but said it’s too early to say.

“I was all-in on this particular position. This to me was a confluence of everything I had studied professionally over my entire career combined with the community that I call home. This was the only position I had ever considered before,” she explained. “It would be too soon to speculate about what the future holds.”

Johnson built her political campaign on issues regarding safety, traffic, and most notably, rebuilding the Gardiner ramp’s east end. From speaking to the community, she still believed that one of the most important issues affecting Beaches-East York is gridlock.

“For me, the number one issue was getting the east end moving again. It was giving serious political attention to the traffic and transit in Beaches-East York,” she said.

“I came out of the gate in May at the start of this campaign with a call to expedite the rebuild of the Gardiner ramp, because it had really changed the quality of life for folks here, and had led to significant congestion. It’s a huge piece of the mobility puzzle. We need to address the safety and reliability of the system.”

Addressing Erskine-Smith’s late entry into the race for councillor, Johnson said that it “certainly changed the dynamic of the race,” but ultimately wished him well as the ward’s new councillor.

“I’m really hopeful he can be here for the community, and advance some of the priorities of Beaches-East York,” she said. “I’m very proud that we led the call to action on expediting the rebuild of the Gardiner ramp. Certainly, in the final days of this campaign, he decided to champion that as an issue as well, and I’m hoping the result here is that that gets done under an expedited time frame. If we can accomplish that, then I think that is a function of the political process working.”

Though he was a first-time political candidate, Dann is not new to how the City of Toronto runs. He worked for the city for 25 years, managing parks, waterfront, and public infrastructure. Local roots run deep for him; his parents have lived in the Beaches for more than 50 years, and he raised his children in the neighbourhood.

His campaign priorities were transportation, smart growth, parks and public spaces, and environment and climate. After a career spent making the city work, the next step was running for council.

“[It was] a tremendous amount of learning. That was a great experience. I definitely had a lot of people approach me with other ideas, but what resonated was that it was a very truthful campaign to me. I really felt we did what was totally genuine,” said Dann at his campaign office on Danforth Avenue.

He said he was proud of how his team ran the campaign, despite the “rug being pulled from underneath” when Erskine-Smith entered the race just before the deadline.

“A lot of politics is totally ugly, and a lot of things happened in this campaign, and my immediate core team, we had two choices that we could’ve made where we could’ve turned really ugly. We could’ve slung arrows; we could’ve gone down in the mud. I said no, and the team said no,” said Dann in his address to supporters. “If we really want to improve society and what we’re all about, then we don’t get into that.”

He entered the race on the first of May, the day nominations opened. His team knocked on 25,000 doors and had to get good at getting their message across.

“My message was really resonating with people wanting clean and beautiful parks, effective transportation, and the growth that’s coming through housing; they want proper infrastructure to go with it,” said Dann. “I chose to focus on doing creative things here. I was about ideas and telling the truth.”

Dann was endorsed by Beaches-East York Member of Provincial Parliament Mary-Margaret McMahon. They worked together when she was a city councillor.

“We did some innovative things along the waterfront. All the things you love along the Beach wouldn’t have happened without James. He’s an operations guy; he gets stuff done, he’s kind of behind the scenes, but knows how the city works and makes it happen,” she said. “I can totally get behind that.”

Projects he has led or helped deliver include restoring the Leuty Lifeguard Station, refurbishing the Woodbine Bathing Station, resurfacing the Boardwalk. He worked with five mayors, Mel Lastman, David Miller, Rob Ford, John Tory, and Olivia Chow, while he was with the city from 1999 to 2024. 

McMahon was a Beaches-East York councillor from 2010 to 2018, after serving two terms and not running again. Brad Bradford succeeded her as councillor in 2018. She was elected MPP in 2022.

Turnout for advance polls this election was almost double the 2022 numbers in Toronto, and McMahon said that tells her people are keen to exercise their civic right. “Especially in Ward 19, and some other wards as well, when there’s an open race, people are eager to get to the polls and have their voices and choices heard,” she said.

Dann came into the race brand-new and said he heard from countless people that he ran an awesome campaign and was told by thousands that they voted for him.

 “As far as what I was able to control, it was great. The team that I assembled around me, the messaging was excellent, consistent from day one. It’s super hard to knock off 10 years of name recognition; there’s no way that we could’ve come in so cold and been able to do that. I wish [Erskine-Smith] the best, and the mayor, I think they’re going to do a great job,” said Dann.

As the results for Ward 19 Beaches-East-York rolled in Monday night, council candidate Jennie Worden reflected on her fourth-place finish in her campaign office at 308 Main St., where she gave an empowering speech despite her loss.

Worden, who finished second to Brad Bradford in the 2022 Beaches-East York councillor race, took 8.1 per cent of the vote in Monday’s election.

“Obviously, they weren’t the results that we were hoping for, and it’s very hard to go up against an established name like Nathaniel Erskine-Smith and succeed, especially when he has the full backing of the mayor and all of the influence that includes,” Worden told her supporters on Monday.

She said that she registered to run for council in May, while Erskine-Smith only entered the race in the last week of registrations. “I was an established candidate while Nate was still deciding whether he was going to coach baseball or run for office,” she said.

The issue she heard most from voters, said Worden, was a lack of representation in the ward. “I think the biggest issue is just that people have felt very unrepresented, and as though they had no voice at city hall, and there was a pervasive sense of fear.”

She urged supporters to continue pressing city hall on local issues that are important to them, telling each of them to go at least once this year and write a petition. “Every single one of you is going to make his life very interesting,” she said, referring to Erskine-Smith’s upcoming term as Beaches-East York councillor.

“So the work does not stop today, and it does not stop tomorrow, because every day we are making that change,” said Worden.

• With files from Khalil Aden, Marco Chow, Julia Sawicki and Jessica Shackleton.