Regina’s city council is almost entirely comprised of new faces heading into 2025 after a four-year term rife with the kind of drama that makes headlines.
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The Leader-Post is looking back on some of the stories that had the biggest impact in 2024. Today: a municipal election that produced a new-look city council in Regina.
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Amid calls for change at city hall, Regina voters certainly answered during 2024’s municipal election — but perhaps not in a way that was entirely expected.
Regina city council underwent a near-total turnover, flipping nine of 11 seats to bring in almost all brand new faces around the horseshoe-shaped table in Henry Baker Hall.
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Council watchers anticipated a change heading to the polls, with six councillors opting to leave their seats. But it was the outcome of the mayor’s race that was perhaps the most surprising.
Political greenhorn Chad Bachynski was able to unseat incumbent Sandra Masters and defeat former Ward 4 city councillor Lori Bresciani in one fell swoop on Nov. 13.
Bachynski seemingly sauntered up the middle between the two council veterans, pulling an early but unwavering lead as results trickled in on election night.
Just two of four returning councillors held onto their seats. Terina Nelson and Bob Hawkins lost their re-election bids, leaving Shanon Zachidniak (Ward 8) and Jason Mancinelli (Ward 9) as the only familiar names to return in December.
All nine fresh faces have promised to usher in a new era of municipal politics, one of tranquility and collaboration — unsurprising given the turbulence within the last council that was a major campaign point.
The 2024 municipal election will also be remembered as the first time a noticeable number of third-party groups added their voices to the cacophony of the campaign trail, lambasting the past council for its spending, clashes in meetings, and dilly-dallying on big decisions.
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At least five groups and two municipal politicians — former mayor Pat Fiacco and outgoing Ward 3 councillor Andrew Stevens — involved themselves by either endorsing or decrying candidates.
Some of the third-party groups spent big on billboards, mail-out flyers and social media attack ads.
Advance Regina, linked to the Saskatchewan Party and Conservative Party of Canada, spent more than $15,000 on targeted Facebook ads about city council in 2024. Slogans like “stop the waste!” plastered across the group’s page were eerily similar to messages in a billboard campaign from Alberta-based Common Sense Regina, which called for the city to get “back to the basics.”
Even school board trustee races had a lively buzz as candidates were grilled about their stances on parents’ rights and whether they were backed by the Regina Civic Awareness & Action Network — an activist group that rallied against gender diversity education.
It’s not entirely clear how successful these groups were in helping to orchestrate change at city hall, but the meddling certainly raised voters’ hackles in a way that Regina’s municipal politics hadn’t seen in some time.
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“I just don’t think the people of Regina appreciate it,” Masters said when billboards targeting her appeared in November — and it seems she was right in some way.
As Leader-Post columnist Murray Mandryk put it: “Well, Regina voters did want change. But they wanted to figure out themselves what that change was supposed to look like.”
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