David Hickey has been elected to the vacant Ward 3 council seat in Saint John. (Submitted)
David Hickey will be the newest member of Saint John Common Council.
He won the Ward 3 byelection on Monday with 758 votes — or 33.7 per cent.
Hickey said he is thrilled with the win but noted it was a team effort.
“We had an incredible campaign team that was able to build that message and get that message out,” said Hickey. “Over the campaign, we knocked on 7,000 doors. I couldn’t have done that alone.”
Early numbers from Elections New Brunswick show fewer than one-in-five eligible voters (19 per cent) came out to cast a ballot. Hickey said this shows him there is more work to be done on getting people involved in the community.
“When we’re having these conversations with people and building the plans for our city and the outlook for the city, it needs to include ownership over community,” he said.
“The more people get involved in their community and the more people can be excited about the places that they live, the more we can increase the voter turnout and the more we can work to get people to the polls.”
I want to congratulate @DavidHickeyNB David Hickey on being elected to council and thank all the other candidates for running. We'll need help from you all, to move our great @cityofsaintjohn forward.
— Don Darling (@dondarlingSJ) May 6, 2019
One of Hickey’s biggest priorities as councillor will be to focus on poverty.
“We have a 49 per cent child poverty rate in Ward 3. That’s one-in-two kids without housing security or food security,” he said. “If that’s not a lens we use to make every decision on council, than we’re doing something wrong.”
Andrew Costin came in second with 370 votes (16.4 per cent) followed by Brad Mitchell with 318 votes (14.1 per cent). Katelin Dean, Frank James, Adam Salesse and Anthony Capson were also on the ballot.
Saint John was not the only community which had a byelection on Monday.
Voters on Campobello Island elected Brett Newman as their new mayor — he picked up 79 per cent of the votes.
In Blacks Harbour, Heather Chase and Guy Maillet were elected to fill the two vacant council seats.
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