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James Risdon doesn't hide his disappointment in the election results for the Bathurst mayoralty contest, but acknowledges that the voters have spoken.

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James Risdon

"Obviously I ran to win so I am disappointed in not having won the election. This is obviously a clear mandate for Mr. Brunet and for his platform and his ideas," he said in an election night interview.

The former journalist was handily defeated by incumbent Stephen Brunet in Monday's municipal election, receiving 612 votes to Mr. Brunet's 3,943.

He said while he didn't win, he did achieve some of the goals he wanted to achieve by running..

"I wanted to give the voters a chance...I put out some new ideas which I hope will be picked up by the newly elected council and mayor, so in that sense, I feel that I've been able to accomplish some what I set out to accomplish."

Mr. Risdon, a business student at the New Brunswick Community College, didn't put up any signs around the city during his campaign, saying he was making an environmental statement since such signs generally end up in the landfill.

Instead, he ran an on-line campaign via a blog, bought some radio ads and relied on stories in the media to get his name and message out. While the post of campaign signs is a time-honoured tradition in a municipal election campaign, Mr. Risdon said he doesn't think his decision to take a different tact hurt his chances.

"I think the media did a pretty good job of covering the election," he said, noting that he was up against an incumbent mayor with a lot of political goodwill.

"He's clearly a popular mayor...People decided to give him a strong vote of confidence to go ahead with a second term."

However, he expected to do better than the final vote tally showed.

"I thought I had more support than that...I was getting quite a bit of...positive feedback, from francophones, people at the college, but also from people that were downtown. Like I say, I thought I was going to be doing better than this in the election but the people have clearly decided to support the previous mayor."

Mr. Risdon said he had made it clear from the start that his campaign was a one-off endeavour, and he has no intention of running for city council again in four years.