Virtually all of Donna Skelly’s by-election win was financed from outside ward seven. About half of her individual donors also contributed to her unsuccessful 2014 run for the Conservatives in Ontario as did several of her corporate funders.
The financial statements filed last week also reveal many frequent corporate and union donors – one which backed five of the candidates including Skelly and the second, third and fifth place finishers. Several other donors funded multiple candidates in the by-election which saw Skelly emerge victorious with slightly less than a fifth of the ballots cast by and just under a quarter of eligible voters casting ballots.
Of the 32 individuals who contributed more than $100 each to Skelly’s campaign only one has an address in her central mountain ward. And every one of her 28 corporate and three union funders also came from outside the section of the city that she now represents on city council.
Seven of the corporate gifts came from outside Hamilton entirely, as did nearly a third of her individual donations. The former locations included Woodbridge, Aurora, Oakville and Toronto, while individual gifts came from as far away as the north western Ontario community of Fort Francis.
Skelly also reported collecting exactly $2000 in gifts smaller than $100 whose source isn’t required to be revealed, so some of those may have been residents of ward seven. And presumably some of the donor union members or employees of her corporate benefactors may also live in the central mountain constituency. In total, Skelly reports she raised and spent just under $31,000.
The biggest spender in the by-election was Local 837 of the Labourers International Union of North America (LIUNA) which gave the maximum allowed gift of $750 to each of Skelly, John Paul Danko, Uzma Qureshi, Doug Farraway and Howard Rabb. The union, which also has operated as the developer of such projects as the Lister Block and LIUNA Station, has been an important player in earlier elections.
In the 2014 Hamilton municipal campaign LIUNA spread nearly $5000 (the maximum allowed) among eight candidates. Seven of those now sit along with Skelly on the 16 member city council.
Various companies represented by members of the Mercanti family backed four unsuccessful candidates – Qureshi, Rabb, Geraldine McMullen and Farraway – particularly favouring the latter candidate who ended up in fifth in the vote tally. The Mercanti name was also prominent among donors in the 2014 Hamilton municipal election to at least ten of the winners.
Others who hedged their financial bets in the ward seven by-election included trucking magnate Ron Foxcroft who gave $750 to Skelly in a personal donation, while his Foxcroft Capital Corporation handed the same amount to Farraway. A Binbrook resident provided $750 to each of Skelly and Danko, plus $500 to Rabb.
Another familiar corporate donor was Ancaster Self-Storage which gave $750 to Skelly and $300 to Farraway. This company handed out nearly $5000 in the last municipal contest including to current councillors Chad Collins, Lloyd Ferguson, Terry Whitehead, Sam Merulla and Robert Pasuta.
The political action committee of the carpenters union also backed multiple candidates - $600 to McMullen, and $300 to Rabb and $300 to Qureshi. The latter gathered the largest volume of individual gifts at $22,000 plus $4450 in corporate donations and $700 from unions.
McMullen topped the union donations with $4000 while Skelly ran away with the corporate gift race collecting $13,500 in that category – nearly triple her closest rival Qureshi who raised $4450 from that source.
A review of donors to Skelly and other provincial Conservative candidates in the 2014 election turned up a dozen and a half individuals or corporations who also helped fund her ward seven victory.