Elections to Hartlepool Borough Council in the ceremonial county of County Durham in England were held on 2 May 2002. One third of the council was up for election and the council stayed under no overall control.[1] At the same time an election took place for a directly elected mayor, which was won by independent candidate Stuart Drummond.[2]
Mayoral election
Campaign
Five candidates stood in the election for mayor, one each from the three main political parties and two independents. The Labour candidate for mayor was Leo Gillen, a local businessman who had led the campaign in favour of introducing a directly elected mayor.[3] The Liberal Democrats selected the leader of the council since 2000, Arthur Preece, as their candidate for mayor, while the Conservatives chose councillor Stephen Close.[4] The first independent candidate, Stuart Drummond, was better known as H'Angus the Monkey the official mascot for the local football team Hartlepool United F.C..[2][5] The other independent candidate was Ian Cameron, another local businessman.[6]
Drummond campaigned on a pledge to give free bananas to all school pupils under 11 in Hartlepool.[5] He received backing from the football club who paid his deposit[7] and he promised that he would attempt to keep a local sports centre open, improve sporting facilities, tackle crime[8] and reduce the number of councillors.[5] His candidacy began as something of a joke but became more serious as he attracted support during the campaign.[9]
A supplementary voting system was used in the mayoral election with second preferences being used if no candidate received over half of the vote.[10] A local bookmaker initially made Drummond a 100-1 outsider in the mayoral election but soon had to suspend betting after receiving a lot of bets from local people.[11]
Results
Stuart Drummond won the mayoral election defeating the Labour candidate Leo Gillen on second preferences.[2] Drummond said that his victory was due to disillusionment with local politicians and said that he was serious about doing a good job for Hartlepool as mayor.[12] Local Member of Parliament Peter Mandelson praised Drummond on his victory and described him as being "very committed".[13] However other political opponents described the results as having made Hartlepool "a laughing stock".[12]
Council election
In the previous election in 2000 the Labour party had lost control of the council which since then had been run by a coalition between the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives.[15] Elections took place in 16 of the 17 wards with only Greatham ward not holding an election.[10] Most attention was on the mayoral election but there was a large swing of 14.2% to Labour in the council election. However they were only able to gain one seat in Seaton ward from the Conservatives.[16]
After the election, the composition of the council was
Summary of results
| Hartlepool Local Election Result 2002 |
| Party |
Seats |
Gains |
Losses |
Net gain/loss |
Seats % |
Votes % |
Votes |
+/− |
| |
Labour |
9 |
|
|
+1 |
56.3 |
49.4 |
9,550 |
|
| |
Liberal Democrat |
3 |
|
|
-1 |
18.8 |
24.7 |
4,768 |
|
| |
Conservative |
2 |
|
|
-1 |
12.5 |
18.3 |
3,529 |
|
| |
Independent |
2 |
|
|
+1 |
12.5 |
4.8 |
934 |
|
| |
UKIP |
0 |
|
|
0 |
0 |
2.8 |
540 |
|
Ward results
References
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- ↑ 17.00 17.01 17.02 17.03 17.04 17.05 17.06 17.07 17.08 17.09 17.10 17.11 17.12 17.13 17.14 17.15 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
