Theresa Kavanagh retains Bay ward city council seat

Theresa Kavanagh will once again be city councillor for Bay Ward after winning 82 per cent of the vote in the 2026 municipal election.

“I feel relieved. It’s been a lot of work. I couldn’t stop until I knocked on that last door,” Kavanagh said to a crowd of about 40 supporters.

Cheers erupted as the results came in and supporters congratulated Kavanagh on her win in a pizza shop on Carling Avenue. “You earned it,” shouted someone from the crowd as the supporters clapped.

Kavanagh said she thought voters had appreciated the hard work by her and her team over the past eight years in office, especially recently following the Canada Day floods.

This year’s election results mirrored the race in 2022, when Kavanagh also won with over 80 per cent of the vote.

First-time candidates Spencer Radford and Butch Moore came second and third respectively. Overall, 38 per cent of eligible voters in the ward cast their ballots.

Kavanagh previously worked on Parliament Hill for almost 30 years before switching to municipal politics. She was a trustee for the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board from 2010 to 2018 and was elected to her first term as city councillor in 2018.

Less than an hour before polls closed, Kavanagh was out knocking on doors near Foster Family Farmers, encouraging people to vote.

“It’s just the fact that we’ve got them engaged, that’s really important,” she said.

In her eight years on council, Kavanagh has served as city council liaison on women and gender equity and as the city’s co-liaison for older adults issues. Last year, Kavanagh asked council to reverse the decision made five years earlier to build the 445-hectare Tewin development in rural southeast Ottawa.

On her first day back in office, Kavanagh said she would get to work fixing aging infrastructure in the ward, like sewers and drains.

“We’ve got to get going and spend some money here so that we have results on how we’re going to improve our infrastructure,” Kavanagh said.

For Monday night, though, she said she would focus on getting some rest.

“I think I can eat a piece of pizza now,” she said.

(Check back for updates)
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