Maurizio Bevilacqua celebrates his win with supporters Tuesday night.

The eighth time’s a charm for Maurizio Bevilacqua.

The longtime Vaughan MP was re-elected Tuesday night, carving another notch in his two-decade long political career.

His closest competitor was Conservative Richard Lorello, whom he beat 25,887 to 18,116 votes.

NDPer Vicky Wilkin followed with 5,120 votes and Green Party candidate Adrian Visentin rounded the list out with 3,663 votes.

“To the tens of thousands of individuals that have supported my campaign in 88, 90, 93, 97, 2000, 2004, 2006 and 2008, I say thank you, thank you, thank you,” Mr. Bevilacqua said in his victory speech.

He was referring to his success in past elections and the constituents he has helped repeatedly throughout these past 37 days.

But Mr. Bevilacqua also looked to the future in his speech.

“I have much more work to do to realize this community’s great potential,” he said.

He told The Citizen that “good work and good will gets rewarded in this community.”

Mr. Lorello, in his concession speech, said this election has shown that “Vaughan is changing. Vaughan has changed”.

He said they’ve made progress in convincing Vaughan residents that they deserve better representation than they currently have.

Immediately after the election was called, Mr. Lorello told The Citizen that he was encountering people saying they’ve seen absolutely nothing from the Liberal Party in Vaughan.

A fairly quiet campaign was stirred up by Mr. Lorello’s assertions that his signs were being tampered with. This was followed by more allegations from the Conservative candidate that someone was removing his signs.

At the same time, mysterious signs saying “Maurizio, where are you?” began popping up around Vaughan. The roots of the group behind the signs, which called itself the Vaughan Democratic Alliance, were never found out.

During debates held in the riding, Mr. Bevilacqua encountered much heckling from the audience.

However, despite the heat Mr. Bevilacqua took during the campaign, Vaughan’s voters have reaffirmed their belief in him.

At his victory party, Mr. Bevilacqua gave an answer to the group that put up the “Maurizio, where are you?” signs.

“I’m here celebrating my victory,” he answered them. “And I’m very happy and humbled by the result.”
   Keely Grasser, Staff Writer