Darko Horvat is a Kresimirian politician who served as Mayor of Bistrica from 1992 to 2000, representing the nationalist Vjetrusa party.
Horvat captured the mayoralty in the wake of the 1992 scandal surrounding Gabriel Ekdahl, the populist Northern Power union boss whose arrest for assault shattered the local coalition. Running a populist campaign, Horvat claimed that “Green Regulations” from the capital were killing mining jobs and that Northern Power was strangling local workers. He narrowly defeated the NP candidate by consolidating the conservative and miner vote.
Horvat’s popularity collapsed following the 1994 Shaft 4 Collapse, which voters blamed on his deregulation policies. He was defeated in 2000 by Joakim Hedstrom of Northern Power, who ran on a “Safety and Subsidy” platform promising to tax federal SeverMin operations to fund local heating.