Mayor-elect Darrin Canniff celebrates with supporters, October 22, 2018.

Voters have opted for change in Chatham-Kent.

Darrin Canniff garnered more than twice as many votes as runner-up Alysson Storey in taking the mayor’s race on Monday.  Incumbent Randy Hope ran a distant third.

“Imagine what we can do if we all starting marching the same direction,” said the mayor-elect to his supporters last night.  “The sky is the limit for what we can do here.”

Despite a second place finish, Storey remained upbeat about her campaign.

“I knocked on so many doors across Chatham-Kent and they clearly wanted change,” she said.  “I had hoped I could bring that to them, but I’m glad Darrin is and I wish him all the best.”

Hope finished with nearly 15,000 fewer votes than Mayor-elect Canniff.  But, the outgoing mayor is proud of his record of serving the community for the past dozen years.

“The public just wanted a change, and I’ll accept that,” he said.

Voter turnout was 45.4 per cent, an increase of 3.3 per cent from 2014.