Andrew Knack will be Edmonton’s next mayor
Posted October 21, 2025 2:30 pm.
Last Updated October 21, 2025 6:26 pm.
Former city councillor Andrew Knack will become Edmonton’s next mayor, just over a year after announcing he was stepping away from municipal politics before eventually mounting a successful bid for the city’s top job.
Running as an independent, Knack, the former three-term councillor for Ward Nakota Isga in west Edmonton, beat out fellow veteran councilman Tim Cartmell and a slate of other candidates in the municipal election.
“This victory belongs to all of us, to every single worker — whether you build, teach, drive, fix, care, serve or create,” Mayor-elect Knack said in his victory speech, with his parents at his side.
“This campaign was fuelled by passion, grit and tenacity. Every day Edmontonians spoke loud and clear, choosing optimism and hope over big money and party politics.”
Knack will take over as mayor from Amarjeet Sohi, who did not seek re-election after one term in office. He says his first order of business as mayor elect will be to sit down with incoming councillors to set priorities so they can work together.
The former councillor ran a successful campaign by positioning himself as the only progressive choice in the field. He managed to convince enough of Edmonton’s undecided voters – of which there was a large number just days before the vote – that he was the right person for the job.
“Over the last 12 years on city council and throughout this campaign, I have listened to tens of thousands of Edmontonians, and I will continue to listen,” Knack said. “Parents tell me they don’t feel safe on their way to the library. I heard how the daily commute is a grind on the quality of life. People sleeping rough want a real chance for a home. We will take action to make your neighbourhood safer and make our main streets more vibrant and welcoming, especially at night.
“We will continue to invest in the services and infrastructure that make your life better by fixing roads and keeping recreation spaces and libraries open, accessible and affordable. Because these things are not frivolous, and it’s what you deserve. We will focus on protecting good jobs and growing new ones by expanding the private sector and keeping public services in public hands.”
Knack ran on promises to increase Edmonton’s housing affordability with an infill plan that would reduce mid-block multiplexes to a maximum of six units on most residential lots; encourage a strong economy and responsible budgeting at city hall; and increase safety by expanding the number of transit peace officers and working with police and social groups to create a city plan intended for the provincial and federal governments.
“With 200,000 new neighbors in our beautiful city, Edmonton continues to build as a city of possibilities,” Knack said. “With exceptional growth comes opportunity. No doubt there are problems, but with all this momentum, we are building to a new moment, a moment where every new business knows the city has their back, where we welcome new families and every student who stays here to build their career, and with every senior who calls our city home.”
‘Rejection of party politics’
Cartmell, the veteran city councillor who ran under the Better Edmonton banner, reached out to Knack Tuesday afternoon to congratulate him and concede.
“He has a big job ahead, and I truly wish him success,” Cartmell wrote in a statement. “Because when Edmonton succeeds, we all succeed.”
Political parties at the municipal level were newly allowed under provincial Bill 20, though it received pushback from some of Alberta’s municipal leaders. Better Edmonton and PACE were the two parties represented this year; all other candidates ran as independents.
Knack said the election results were a “very clear rejection of party politics in Edmonton.”
“Over 70 per cent of people said they didn’t want this,” Knack said. “And we saw the election results loud and clear that the people that ran as independents, that’s what people want. They want people who are going to listen to all Edmontonians.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re on the right or on the left, in the centre. There is no right wing way to clear snow off the streets. There’s no left wing way to cut our grass.”
Campaign funding disparity
This year’s municipal election was also the first time since 2007 that corporations and unions were allowed to directly contribute to candidates.
Interim financial disclosures showed nearly 40 per cent of Cartmell’s contributions came from corporate donors, as he topped the fundrasing charts with $847,000 between Jan. 1 and July 31 – an amount more than all other candidates combined.
Knack had raised $54,000 by that point.
“I can’t wait to see the dollar per vote count,” Knack joked. “It’s still amazing just how little money we had compared to everyone else. But we had the people, and when I talked about thanking the volunteers, like the amount of effort and time that everyone put into this campaign, it’s incredible to see how many people we reached, how many communities we were able to engage, the creative ways to engage, right? And that was it. We didn’t have the money, so we had to figure out different ways to get in front of Edmontonians.
“We had volunteers. Some of us walked literally 52 kilometres from one end of the city to the other to try to connect with Edmontonians in ways that maybe you can’t always do, right? We didn’t have the money for a mail-up. There’s a Canada Post strike anyways, that wasn’t going to help very much. But we had volunteers delivering flyers by hand. All of this was done in the same way I’ve run campaigns as a counsellor, which is be in front of Edmontonians in as many different ways as possible. But it’s that face to face, it’s that over the phone, it’s the replying directly to emails — that’s how we did this, and it was such an incredible team effort.”
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith congratulated Knack and others in an X post.
“Congratulations to all the newly elected mayors, councillors, and school board trustees across Alberta,” Premier Smith wrote. “I look forward to working with you to make our communities more affordable, get homes built faster, and keep local government focused on results.
“My further congratulations to Jeromy Farkas @JeromyYYC and Andrew Knack @AndrewKnack on being elected as Calgary and Edmonton’s newest Mayors.”
A knack for politics
Born in Edmonton and raised in Spruce Grove, Knack’s political aspirations began with a failed city council bid in west Edmonton’s then-named Ward 1 in 2007 when he was just 23 years old. He was defeated again in 2010.
He turned those defeats into a convincing victory in 2013, earning 44.7 per cent of the vote to represent Ward 1 at city council. He was re-elected in 2017 with 68.8 per cent of the vote.
Knack again won re-election in 2021 – with two-thirds of the vote – after the ward was renamed Nakota Isga and saw its boundaries changed.
But it looked like Knack’s tenure at city hall was coming to an end when in September 2024 he announced he would not run again this election, saying he was walking away from his “dream job” while pondering a move to provincial politics.
“At some point, you have to make space for others too. And I know there’s great people ready to go, and I think that’s important,” Knack said at the time.
Things changed for the councillor in March – just six months after his teary-eyed announcement – when Sohi declared he was running for the federal Liberals and would not be seeking re-election as Edmonton mayor. Knack confirmed he was running for mayor in May, and officially launched his campaign in June.
“There were a number of things that changed from that announcement about a year-and-a-month ago,” Knack explained during Tuesday’s victory speech. “We had a U.S. election where we saw the re-election of somebody that maybe doesn’t add to the positivity and decorum I hope to see in politics. We saw a federal election where we have the same governing party but a new prime minister. We saw, provincially, discussions about things like separation, which I don’t think add a lot of value at a time where there’s so many other priorities.
“Our current mayor made a decision not to run again, and I think the biggest one is what we just talked about, the introduction of local political parties. I felt so strongly about that from the very beginning, that that was a system that is too toxic to come into our local government that needed to be sent away so that we could continue to do the work that we do each and every day. And so that really drove me to be motivated to engage others, to see if there was a role I could play in this election. And I’m so fortunate that Edmontonians are going to give me this great privilege to serve them as their next mayor.”
He beat out Cartmell, Michael Walters, Omar Mohammad, Rahim Jaffer, Tony Caterina, Paul Bakhmut, Ronald Stewart Billingsley Jr., Abdul Malik Chukwudi, Vanessa Denman, Andy Gudanowski, Utha Nadauk and Olney Tugwell for Edmonton’s top job.
