Government pressured the local council telling them if they wanted investment and greater devoloution they had to bring in a Mayor so the council ran scared and decided to bring in a mayor without even holding a referendum. The following is the result of the vote held yesterday, the Labour candidate got 50% more of the total first preference votes than his nearest competitor so it didnt even go to the counting of second preference votes.
Joe Anderson, Labour, 58,448, 59.33%
Liam Fogarty, Independent, 8,292, 8.42%
Richard Kemp, Liberal Democrats, 6,238, 6.33%
John Coyne, Green Party, 5,175, 5.25%
Tony Mulhearn, TUSC, 4,792, 4.86%
Stephen Radford, Liberal, 4,442, 4.51%
Tony Caldeira, Conservative, 4,425, 4.49%
Adam Heatherington, UKIP, 2,352, 2.39%
Paul Rimmer, English Democrats, 1,400, 1.42%
Jeff Berman, Liverpool Independent Party, 1,362, 1.38%
Mike Whitby, BNP, 1,015, 1.03%
Peter Tierney, National Front, 566, 0.57%