Olivia Chow just hired a former Liberal campaign director to lead her re-election run
Andrew Bevan, a well-known Liberal adviser, promises that Chow isn’t entering her centrist era
Mayor Olivia Chow has hired a powerhouse political adviser to co-chair her re-election campaign.
As reported today by the Toronto Star, Andrew Bevan, who co-directed Prime Minister Mark Carney’s campaign during the 2025 federal election, will join Chow’s team alongside Michal Hay, who will also serve as a campaign co-chair.
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Bevan being a familiar presence in past Liberal campaigns—including those of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and former Ontario premier, Kathleen Wynne—may cause some to wonder if Chow is moving further to the political centre, perhaps in a bid to counter her leading mayoral rival, Brad Bradford.
But Bevan told the Star this isn’t the case. “I’m not changing where the mayor is coming from or what she’s had on offer in the past and what she has achieved,” he said.
Toronto’s mayoral election will take place on October 26. A recent poll found that if it occurred today, Chow would earn 49 per cent of the decided vote, and Bradford would take 40 per cent.
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Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
