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Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps, who faced nine challengers for mayor, pulled off another win in the capital city.

“I feel like we have a strong mandate to carry on,” she told reporters after the ballots were counted.

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Long lineups at the ballot boxes in Victoria delayed the counting of the votes. Anyone who was in line at a voting place when the polls closed at 8 p.m. were allowed to vote.

Helps, 42, received 42.6 per cent of the vote compared to Stephen Hammond’s 29.3 per cent and Michael Geoghagen’s 14.6 per cent.

Photo by DARREN STONE / PNG

Sociology professor Bruce McGuigan, 59, ran fourth with 8 per cent of the vote.

Helps, who served one term on council before becoming mayor, became a lightening rod for controversy over the last four years, seemingly carrying the weight of every council decision from bike lanes to new development.

Opponents slammed her during the campaign for what they saw as a top-down approach to consultation, saying Helps had developed a pattern of pushing ahead with decisions only to later back down and/or apologize when it became clear the neighbourhood wasn’t on board.

Helps, who maintained she was the only candidate with a detailed plan of action for the future, countered that she did listen and that focusing on two or three consultation processes didn’t succeed ignored hundreds that did.

Meanwhile, there is a new mayor in Oak Bay as councillor Kevin Murdoch defeated Mayor Nils Jensen.

Saanich will have a new mayor as Coun. Fred Haynes defeats incumbent Mayor Richard Atwell and in Sooke, incumbent mayor Maja Tait took 56.4 per cent of the vote to hold off challengers.

Langford Mayor Stew Young was re-elected. In Colwood Coun. Rob Martin defeated incumbent mayor Carol Hamilton.

Esquimalt incumbent Barb Desjardins won decisively, while in Sidney, challenger Cliff McNeil-Smith, who received almost 80 per cent of the vote, took out incumbent Steve Price.

The mayors in Central Saanich, Highlands, Metchosin and View Royal were all acclaimed, as well as the North Saanich and Highlands councils.

With files from the Victoria Times Colonist