Manifest 2018: Bluewater Mayoralty Election Pool

The results are in and Klopp wins in a landslide

Paul Klopp	2259	60.20%
Tyler Hessel	1491	39.80%
Total	3781
Klopp margin of victory	768

The winner of the pool is Nick whose prediction was Klopp by 400 votes.

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The contest and the pool This year at Bayfield everyone noticed the high level of political edginess in the town. There were mysterious “Save Our Ice” lawn signs everywhere and they stayed up all year. At Manifest, people learned about the upcoming political contest for Mayor and its connection to the Save Our Ice controversy. Everyone’s interest was piqued. It was decided that this was a much better contest to base our annual political pool on than the American midterm elections or the Toronto Mayoralty election.

The Save Our Ice Brouhaha Everyone who visited Bayfield this year noticed the “Save Our Ice” lawn signs. It had a quiet, angry, internal quality that was hard for outsiders to penetrate. The matter occupied the mayor and council from the spring. The signs stayed up all summer and were still around the last time we were there. Council outsourced the question of continuing to have arena ice to a team of consultants who managed to spend $50,000 or so, and managed to answer the question as to how it was paid for before now. The consultants’ report landed on the desks of the incumbent mayor and his fellow councillors sometime in the past week. The story got lots of play in most of the local papers. This is bad news for incumbents in both the mayor’s and deputy mayor’s chairs. Klopp and Dowson have the advantage of not being incumbents. As well, one of the councillors who urged Bayfielders to keep their “Save Our Ice” lawn signs in place until the matter was resolved was a councillor from Hensall, one of the few “rural” areas where Hessel was competitive in 2014.

The following predictions were made:

Participant	Predicted winner	Margin of Victory
Tom	Hessel	100
Russell	Klopp	300
Michael C.	Hessel	580
Bob	Klopp	250
Nick	Klopp	400
Rob	Hessel	250

Meet the contenders There are two contenders for the Bluewater Mayoralty Election in 2018: Paul Klopp and Tyler Hessel. They spoke at the August meeting of the Bayshore Residents Association in Bayfield and there is video from that event. In addition, I have also included video from Bill Dowson, who is running for Deputy Mayor. Dowson was one of the candidates for Mayor in 2014, finishing third behind Klopp and Hessel (the winner). So this is a rematch of sorts.

Paul Klopp	Tyler Hessel	Bill Dowson

The results from the 2014 Election

Electoral Ward	Dowson	Hessel	Klopp	Moyer
Bayfield	279	395	119	133
Hay (East) Blue on map	119	119	359	106
Hay (West) Red on map	87	409	132	166
Hensall	95	144	139	54
Stanley (East) green on map	299	117	174	66
Stanley (West) purple on map	121	381	83	63
Zurich	90	53	262	33
Totals	1090	1618	1268	621

Ward Maps of Bluewater

The Bluewater Election in the Press and Media There has been one major story in the press about the upcoming election. It appeared in the summer and focused on Paul Klopp’s decision to enter the race. The Bluewater Shoreline Residents’ Association held a question and answer session after their August meeting. (The video above is from that meeting.) As well, there will be an all-candidates town hall meeting on October 11 in the Bayfield Town Hall. More material will be added as it becomes available and this page will be updated.

UPDATE: The Exeter Lakeshore Times-Advance covered the Bluewater all candidates meeting hosted by the Bayfield and Area Chamber of Commerce at Bayfield Town Hall on Oct. 11. The event was apparently live streamed. No video record has been found.

COMMENTS:

Kloppites and Hessians: The Bluewater mayoralty election is a much more interesting election than the Dofo-ravaged Toronto municipals. And there is the interesting fate of the two once-promising young Rae government backbenchers who were offered leg assistantships in 1990 to increase their profile: Paul Klopp and Giorgio “Hotwheels” Mammoliti. Klopp’s bio is a whole lot more edifying. It did not take long for pool partisanship to take over. Some in our group started referring to the “Save Our Ice factionalists” as “Kloppites.” Others with a longer historical perspective have taken to calling the current mayor’s partisans as “Hessians.” Name calling always arouses interest. — Russell, 10 October 2018

Klopp campaign gets in gear: Klopp has been holding Meet and Greets all over Bluewater (Hensall, Zurich, and Bayfield)

Klopp campaign gets in gear: Bluewater Shoreline Residents’ Association endorses Tyler Hessel (October 5, 2018). The silk stocking district decides to back the downtown elite current mayor.

Hessel cries foul: Hessel claims some miscreant tried to sabotage his campaign by stealing a Save Our Ice lawn sign and marking it up with an anti-Hessel message.

One last campaign post: Exeter Today on 90.5 FM had brief interviews with the mayoralty candidates (Klopp and Hessel).

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More Comments:

Fidgin Fainite said on E-Day minus one at 11:42 PM...

“My gawd the excitement is palpable. The Ice Saving signs are still up around Bayfield. One good sign for Hessel is that the lesbian ex library sci prof from Western two door south of us who runs the local baroque quartet has a Hessel sign prominently displayed. She had a Wynn sign in the last election so her endorsement is not a guarantee of victory. Another Hessel sign spotted is on the lawn of the former Catholic church across the street. It is being renoed by a guy who has refused to pay Don (our communications center across the street) and various other local tradesmen for their work on his house. Catherine suggested that the placement of his sign (directly facing the house north of him across the street--Hessel's former residence until he ran out on his wife three years ago to move in with some (presumable) hussy a few blocks away, may be less as statement of political conviction than evidence of generalized antagonism to his immediate neighbors. The embittered ex wife has at least (so far) not displayed a Klopp sign. Further coverage of this titanic battle may, or may not, be found in Bayfield's online weekly the Bayfield Breeze (TM R'gd)”

Russell said at 3:07 PM on E-Day...

Good Lord. Someone has been holding out on us with all this insider information. From the public information available, no one would ever guess that Tyler Hessel has something of an Elmer Gantry quality. You can ditch your wife in a burg like Bayfield and still run for mayor? And what gives with all the worthy burghers of the Bayshore Silk Stocking District who voted so heavily for Hessel last time? Is their attitude this: “He kept my taxes low and put it all on the farmers. That's all I care about.” I was half serious about having a guard dog at the ballot box. However, it may not matter. Somewhere on Facebook Hessel has already thanked the 2500 people who have voted by phone or over the interweb. This is an amazing contest.

Rob said at 8:46 PM on E-Day...

Kloop is winning by a landslide.

Russell said at 2:41 PM on November 11…

One further bit of information for Bayfield/Bluewater watchers involves the ongoing conversion of a trailer park in town; it seems to be being appealed somewhere, possibly to the OMB. A local member of the Party of Humanity, whose run for TDSB was spectacularly unsuccessful, chatted with me during the municipals here. I told him that I expected disaster here. Seeing as how nobody had asked me anything about stupid decisions made, I was pretty much uninterested in the results and would be voting for Brenda’s FullFemTimesUpCaballeros slate this time out and that the only election I was interested in was the Bluewater/Bayfield Mayoralty. He asked me why I was interested and I told him I had a personal investment. He then told me that he was doing some work on the trailer park conversion. All I have to do is find out which side he’s supporting and we have the making of a new spring poll on an OMB decision.

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