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SURREY First spent $817,136.65 in last year’s Surrey civic election, according to Elections BC documents posted on their website on Tuesday.
Yet despite those big bucks and the advantage of incumbency as well as the all-out support of former mayor Dianne Watts and then-mayor Linda Hepner, Surrey First’s mayoral candidate Tom Gill and the Surrey First team (except for Linda Annis who saved her skin by suddenly going against her own party on the Rosemary Heights development project) suffered a humiliating defeat.
Surrey-ites were simply fed up with the arrogance of Watts and Hepner. Surrey First had taken the people for granted.
Doug McCallum’s Safe Surrey Coalition won the mayor’s post and seven of the eight Council seats by spending $247,289.48.
Integrity Now – former Surrey First councillor Bruce Hayne’s party – spent $224,915.77 but didn’t win a single seat.
As The VOICE reported last October, McCallum got 45,564 votes, Gill garnered 28,553 votes, while Hayne came third with 28,077 votes.
Not only did McCallum win convincingly, but also seven of the eight candidates for council on his Safe Surrey Coalition slate won equally convincingly:
– Brenda Locke (40,497 votes)
– Doug Elford (39,082 votes)
– Laurie Guerra (33,955 votes)
– Jack Singh Hundial (33,750 votes)
– Dr. Allison Patton (33,116 votes)
– Steven Pettigrew (30,820 votes)
– Mandeep Nagra (30,083 votes)
The eighth seat was won by Surrey First’s Linda Annis (33,085 votes).
Safe Surrey Coalition’s Bableen Rana came ninth with 29,822 votes.
Incumbent councillors Barbara Steele (27,482 votes), Mike Starchuk (26,907 votes), Vera LeFranc (25,943 votes) and Dave Woods (25,835 votes) lost.
