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The 2025 money story — Cartmell's big-money campaign LOST

Original source: https://edmonton.taproot.news/news/2025/10/08/disclosures-show-cartmell-pulled-in-834k-about-half-of-all-campaign-contributions ; https://daveberta.ca/2025/10/tim-cartmell-better-edmonton/ ; https://pressprogress.ca/how-development-industry-helped-tim-cartmell-get-head-start/ Retrieved: 2026-07-05

The receipt for "we beat money last time" — grounded, with the honest wrinkle.

Money raised (disclosures as of July 31 2025, via Taproot): | Mayoral candidate | Raised | |---|---| | Tim Cartmell (Better Edmonton) | $834,552 | | Omar Mohammad | $115,730 | | Andrew Knack | $42,112 | | Michael Walters | $36,347 | | Rahim Jaffer | $1,930 |

  • Cartmell raised ~half of ALL campaign contributions across every open position in the city — "nearly as much as all other candidates across all open positions combined."
  • Cartmell's campaign is expected to have spent more than $1 million — the most expensive election campaign in Edmonton's history (daveberta).
  • The money's SOURCE: before nominations even opened, Cartmell raised nearly half a million, "roughly half coming from sources with apparent connections to real estate, construction and development." His 2024 disclosure shows ≥53 donations tied to suburban development, all but eight at the $5,000 maximum (PressProgress).
  • Better Edmonton the PARTY reported $108,786 in contributions ($213,786 revenue) — the party vehicle the UCP's new civic-party law created to let a candidate "leverage large bases of corporate donor support" (daveberta).

THE OUTCOME: Cartmell LOST. Final result: Knack 37.98% (78,519) vs Cartmell 29.83% (61,668) — the ~$1M developer-backed party campaign was beaten by a candidate who raised $42,112, a ~20:1 spending gap the other way. Money lost.

THE HONEST WRINKLE (do not overclaim): the winner, Andrew Knack, ran and governs as an INDEPENDENT, not a leftist — and he is the author of the police funding escalator (moved C604B, 2023). So "we beat money" is true and worth grounding, but it did NOT install the left; it installed the managerial centre-right's escalator author over the developer party. The target now is the incumbent bloc and the order it funds, not merely campaign cash. Frame precisely: big money can lose here (real, encouraging), AND the ceiling of what wins is still carceral-neoliberal management — which is exactly why the living left is extra-electoral.