Dave Neumann

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David Emil Neumann (born October 5, 1941 in Montreal, Quebec) was a politician in Ontario, Canada. He was an Liberal member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1987 to 1990.

Neumann was educated at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and worked as a secondary school teacher. He was an alderman (city councillor) in the city of Brantford from 1977 to 1980, and served as its mayor from 1980 to 1987.

Neumann first ran for the Ontario legislature in the provincial election of 1971, not for the Liberals but for the New Democratic Party in the riding of Brant. He finished a distant third against Robert Nixon, the Liberal Party leader.

He ran again for the legislature in the 1987 provincial election in the riding of Brantford, when he defeated incumbent Phil Gillies of the Progressive Concervative Party, who finished third. The NDP candidate Jack Tubman finished second. For the next three years, Neumann served as a backbench member of the government of David Peterson, where he was Parliamentary Assisitant to the Minister of Municipal Affairs, the Hon. John Eakins, and served as Chair of the all party Standing Committee on Social Affairs.

The Liberals were unexpectedly defeated in the 1990 provincial election, and Neumann lost his seat to Brad Ward of the NDP by over 4,000 votes. Neumann, a Past President of Brant District Five of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation (OSSTF) had been supported by many local teachers in 1987, but had lost much of this support by 1990, when he was one of a number of Liberal candidates targeted for defeat by the provincial office of the OSSTF, because of reforms the Peterson Government had made to the Teachers' Pension Plan. He ran again in the 1995 provincial election, but lost to Progressive Conservative Ron Johnson by 3,327 votes. He has not sought another return to the legislature since this time.

Neumann returned to his education career in 1991, retiring from the Brant County Board of Education in 1997. In 2000 he ran again for Mayor of Brantford, finishing third to incumbent Mayor, Chris Friel. From 1998 to 2005 he worked as Executive Director of the Ontario Association of Adult and Continuing Education School Board Administrators (CESBA).