The robots are almost needing a recharge after extensively reviewing three of Grimsby’s Mayoral candidates; Simon Duong, Jeff Jordan and Michelle Seaborn in their NewsNow podcast interviews. So before the robots fall into hibernation, let us take a look a final look at their findings.

Each candidate was first reviewed by the Panel on the same basic question:

What did the interview actually demonstrate about their readiness for the job of Mayor?

These were free-form interviews, therefore they were not identical. NewsNow’s Mike Williscraft asked different questions, pursued different follow-ups and sometimes supplied facts or context himself. The Panel accounted for that by treating subjects that were not meaningfully tested as unknown, not weaknesses, and by giving candidates credit only for knowledge and reasoning they demonstrated themselves.

AI REVIEW PANEL // ACTIVE

The Panel’s Final Findings

Based on their demonstrated readiness to lead as Mayor, the Panel ranked Jeff Jordan first (70.5/100), Michelle Seaborn second (64.6/100), and Simon Duong third (43.8/100). Jordan and Seaborn were closely matched, while Duong trailed well behind both. The three interviews left the Panel with differing levels of confidence in each candidate.

Jeff Jordan showed the most developed evidence on municipal governance, Niagara Region, fiscal risk, infrastructure and working with other governments. His weaknesses were much narrower: the interview gave less detail on how some of his priorities would be carried out and measured, and on what he would change about Council process in another term.

Michelle Seaborn showed substantial knowledge of Regional services, infrastructure reserves, growth and servicing. Where her interview broke down was more often on procedure and implementation: how some ideas would legally work, how Council conflict would be handled, how development pressure would actually be managed, and why she initially took a firm biodigester position to before returning to a conditional one under follow-up.

Simon Duong showed a real strength in collaboration and consensus-building, but the interview exposed much larger gaps in municipal governance, Regional decision-making, fiscal scale and administrative procedure. Several answers either needed clarification from Williscraft or stayed at the level of general teamwork and business-management ideas without showing the municipal mechanics behind them.

That difference is the main finding from the series.

The Panel was not judging who sounded better, who had the better résumé or whose policies it preferred. It was looking at whether candidates understood the issue in front of them, knew who had the authority to act, understood the financial consequences and could explain how an idea would actually work in municipal government.

One Important Qualification

These were not standardized interviews. A candidate was not marked down because NewsNow never asked them about something. Different interviews tested different parts of the job to different depths.

But across all three interviews, the broader question was the same:

When the discussion moved beyond campaign language and into how municipal government actually works, what did each candidate demonstrate?

That is where the Panel found meaningful differences.

AI REVIEW PANEL // OFF

Back to the Human

That completes our Review Panel’s look at the three NewsNow participants, our robots can now go and top up their batteries.

If you missed our previous candidate-by-candidate NewsNow podcast analysis posts, you can find them here:

Simon Duong
Incumbent Mayor Jeff Jordan
Michelle Seaborn

You can also find the full NewsNow interviews with all three Grimsby Maoyral candidates at:
https://www.newsnowniagara.com/2026-municipal-election-podcast/