The cast and crew of the City Idol competition watched the Toronto municipal election results come in at Paupers Pub in the Annex, even if the television coverage hardly had the suspense of a World Cup match. Citytv proclaimed David Miller’s re-election as soon as they signed on-air, and went to rival Jane Pitfield for an instantly incredulous reaction: "They’ve already decided on the winner?" The effort to make no-contests like Kyle Rae’s inevitable victory in Toronto-Centre Rosedale sound suspenseful was a pretty fruitless allocation of CityNews resources, especially when the four political neophytes who won their campaign in an ambitious year-long contest were celebrating their achievements, having a chance to play in the municipal campaign field that is historically hostile to neophytes. "Only two candidates really had a chance in Trinity-Spadina," Citytv reporter Dwight Drummond opined from the party of his former colleague Adam Vaughan, who clinched a majority win in what was presumed to be a horserace against Helen Kennedy -- but third place, with almost five per cent of the vote, belonged to Desmond Cole (pictured), the most visible of the City Idol winners, due to his running in a heated downtown ward. (Anthony Reinhart has a profile of Cole in the Tuesday morning Globe.) While the screens showed Senator Jerry Grafstein hailing his "warrior queen" Pitfield following her concession speech, Cole was much more modest in addressing the crowd of about 50 campaign supporters, pleased with them for mounting a campaign rooted in "dignity, friendship and respect", in contrast to the surrounding crossfire between Vaughan and Kennedy. The story of City Idol has also been captured throughout for a documentary, and Cole didn’t fail to thank the camera crew for obsessively preserving his experiences during these months "because I don’t know what the hell has been going on".

PREVIOUSLY: Fencing in the enormous ego of the Annex [October 30 debate report]

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Some other council races covered on Campaign Bubble: Simon Wookey got 23 per cent of the affection in Davenport compared to Adam Giambrone's 66 per cent; Himy Syed scored 403 votes against 8,524 for deputy mayor Joe Pantalone; John Adams' 19 per cent and John Sewell's 23 per cent combined couldn't match the 57 per cent St. Paul's approval for Joe Mihevc; and Garry Green came in a formidable fourth as police-patrolled polls in York West resulted in a guard changing from Peter Li Preti to Anthony Perruzza.

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Burlington: A win for former MPP Cam Jackson surely means renewed rage over at Anybody But Cam For Mayor.

Hamilton: Fred Eisenberger beats out incumbent Larry Di Ianni, with a discusson thread taking shape over at the Hammerblog.

London: Meet the old council same as the old council, as The London Fog predicts "more of the same: increased spending, increased taxes, and increase pressure on federal and provincial governments to bail out the elected politicians of London."

Ottawa: The surprise mayoral conquest by Larry O'Brien gets a foreboding reaction from Mark Bourrie at Ottawa Watch.

St. Catharines: Brian McMullan is the new mayor, with just a fraction of votes going to ex-wrestler and monster movie star Garry Robbins, who was the one subject worthy of a real Campaign Bubble interview.

Sudbury: "If you're not making mistakes then you're not making decisions" was the wisdom Jane Pitfield was trading in, to no avail, but that Tommy Douglas quote spilled from the mouth of new mayor John Rodriguez.

Windsor: Paul Synott, local overlord of all things online, snores: "This was the most apathetic campaign I've ever witnessed in my lifetime. Ideas, thoughts, policy and platforms might as well have been a swear word -- not to be spoken."