Ewan Wilson graceful in his loss

Defeated Hamilton mayoral candidate Ewan Wilson has moved on from the disappointment and is focused on achieving through another term as a West Ward candidate.

After losing what was at times a spiteful election race, Wilson has now turned his attention to the West Ward where he was successful in gaining re-election, polling second highest behind Martin Gallagher.

Wilson believed his fraud convictions dating back to 1996, had played a part in losing the race to Julie Hardaker, but was graceful in his evaluation.

“I congratulate the Mayor on her re-election and on a race well run,” Wilson said on his Facebook page Saturday night.

“While this has been an extremely hard fought campaign I genuinely look forward to working with Julie over the coming term as part of the new council team.”

The gap between Hardaker and Wilson was 2894 votes, with the latter receiving 12,681.

In addition to continued questions from mayoral opponents around his past convictions, Wilson also had to battle with a Facebook smear campaign aimed at derailing his election.

A Facebook page claiming to belong to ‘Wanda Lee’ provided links to negative historic news coverage of Mr Wilson.

“To my opponents and critics, past misgivings are in the past. I trust that I am given this opportunity to prove that I’ve learnt, I’ve listened and my focus, along with that of the entire council, is on a positive future and the many issues at hand.

“You can count on me to work hard, challenge and debate the issues in an effort to deliver sound governance to our city.”