It wasn’t even close on the night of February 27th, in the riding of Hamilton Centre, as the Ontario provincial election came to a close.
Independent candidate, and local incumbent, Sarah Jama, finished fourth, with 14.7 percent of the vote, in contrast to the NDP winner, Robin Lennox, with 38.4 per cent of the 33,469 ballots cast. What a change from the 54 per cent Jama garnered two years earlier, as the official NDP candidate, in her 2023 by-election victory against a strong Liberal opponent.
I canvassed for Sarah Jama and knocked on doors on election day to get the vote out, and participated in a Friday night Shabat event, Jews for Jama, led by Rabbi David Mivasair, in the campaign office. My sense is that Jama ran an excellent campaign, backed by a highly motivated crew of largely young people. She had the backing of the local Steelworkers, federal NDP MP Mathew Green, and downtown city councillors, Nrinder Nann (ward 3), and Cameron Kroetsch (ward 2), who posted on Facebook about how Jama was doing politics differently as an independent MPP and candidate.
What went wrong?
A disengaged electorate is partially blamed for the result. Another is that even though she largely campaigned on a range of issues, similarly raised by the NDP, she was demonized for her stance on Gaza. As well, a two-year stint as a MPP was probably insufficient for Jama to fully solidify a presence as an independent candidate in Hamilton Centre. An independent did win handily in the largely rural riding of Haldimand-Norfolk, but the circumstances were unique. Independent candidates who are high profile rarely do well (Just ask Jane Philpot or John Sewell).
The trouble for Jama began with the vicious Hamas attack from Gaza into Israel on October 7th, 2023, which included the killing of about 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages. The Israeli military response is widely regarded as wildly disproportionate and genocidal in nature, reducing much of Gaza to rubble and killing about 50,000 people.
Jama, as a newly elected MPP, was the first Canadian politician to call for a ceasefire. Ontario premier Doug Ford moved quickly to have Jama censured and banned from speaking or raising questions in the legislature until she apologized for her statements which he called “anti-Semitic.”
It was claimed that Jama had not denounced the violence of Hamas, for which she apologized to the Jewish community. What was not fully understood at the time is that she had just married a Palestinian man and an impending war in Gaza had struck an emotional and personal chord for the MPP. However, much like 9/11, it was politically not okay to speak about root causes after October 7th.
“Jama’s statement did not in fact indicate any support for the rape or murder of any people, let alone Jews. It did provide contextual background information on the current situation in Israel and Palestine, such as the fact that the United Nations considers Israel to be an apartheid state,” wrote political analyst Taylor Noakes in Jacobin Magazine.
Following the controversy, Jama was expelled from the provincial NDP caucus for reasons that have never been fully explained beyond the vague accusation of not being a team player.
“Ms. Jama and I had reached an agreement to keep her in the NDP caucus, which included working together in good faith with no surprises. Our caucus and staff have made significant efforts to support her during an undoubtedly difficult time,” Ontario NDP leader Marit Stiles told reporters. “Since then, she has undertaken a number of unilateral actions that have undermined our collective work and broken the trust of her colleagues,” Stiles added.
Ontario NDP leader, Marit Stiles (who had attended Jama’s wedding), has always denied that the call for a ceasefire by Jama had anything to do with the decision to expel her from caucus. Still, the combination of censure by the premier and exile by Stiles isolated Jama, who had been the NDP’s disability and housing critic.
Locally, in Hamilton Centre, her major opponent was the Hamilton Jewish Federation, which is closely affiliated with the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. The HJF denounced both Jama and her major ally, Rabbi David Mivasair, on a frequent and regular basis. He is a high-profile member of Independent Jewish Voices and membership secretary in the Hamilton Centre NDP.
Mivasair spent months prior to the 2025 Ontario provincial election trying unsuccessfully to get Jama reinstated by the party and allow her to run for the nomination for the NDP in the upcoming election. This proved to be impossible.
For months, Stiles vowed that Jama would never be her party’s candidate for Hamilton Centre. One official reason was that Jama had already established an independent riding association in competition with the NDP. But that was only because Jama, who had retained her NDP party membership, had been kicked out of caucus. What alternative did she have?
Hamilton Centre is a strong NDP riding and the party poured a lot of resources into keeping it. In the end, Robin Lennox’s credible reputation as a doctor working with the homeless helped her ride to victory for the NDP. Jama thanked her supporters and congratulated Lennox on the victory. One hopes that Lennox may be able to lower tensions in a split activist community that also tore up the Hamilton Centre NDP riding association.
The tragedy is that Sarah Jama, as a young, intelligent black woman in a wheelchair, was not able to fulfill her potential in politics. What happens to Jama and the people who worked on her campaign?
I suspect we haven’t heard the last of them.
I want to thank members of the Hamilton Centre NDP for assistance in writing this piece.