Election 2014: Linda Hepner wins in Surrey First sweep

City of Surrey: Surrey First Education also elected all members to Surrey Board of Education.

Surrey Mayor Elect Linda Hepner (right) celebrates with outgoing mayor Dianne Watts.

Surrey Mayor Elect Linda Hepner (right) celebrates with outgoing mayor Dianne Watts.

Linda Hepner is Surrey’s next mayor and her Surrey First team has swept Surrey council.

Hepner received 50,782 votes, almost doubling those garnered by former Mayor Doug McCallum, who took 27,982 votes.

Barinder Rasode came in just behind McCallum with 21,764 people voting for her.

Surrey First also had a lock on all council seats, putting a spread of more than 7,000 votes between them and their nearest competitors.

“Surrey has spoken loud and clear,” Hepner told the crowd of more than 400 gathered at the Central City Brew Pub on Saturday night after the polls closed. “They want us to go forward, not back.

Hepner told The Leader she was delighted, but not surprised. This, she said, is what the coalition’s polling had been telling them all along.

McCallum said publicly he was surprised by the outcome, but added voters had chosen the Hepner plan over his, which “is the public’s right.

Rasode also said she was surprised, but said despite the loss, she will remain a very visible presence on the civic scene.

She will be keeping the One Surrey team intact and said she may well be back on the ballot in 2018.

“If you see my name on any ballot ever again, it will be at the municipal level,” Rasode said.

For now she’ll be focusing on the issues facing the city.

“I still believe very strongly that the issue of public safety has to be addressed immediately,” Rasode said. “The second issue is, when we talk about transportation, we need to make sure we get a ‘yes’ vote on the (TransLink) referendum.

Coun. Tom Gill topped the polls with 52,338 votes, not only edging out perennial poll-topper Judy Villeneuve, but garnering more votes than the mayor herself an extremely rare occurrence.

All of the Surrey First team was installed on council, including Gill, Villeneuve, Barbara Steele, Mary Martin, Bruce Hayne, as well as newly chosen councillor-elects Dave Woods, Mike Starchuk and Vera LeFranc.

Safe Surrey’s Rina Gill was the closest non-elected council candidate, with just over 28,100 votes 9,500 short of that necessary for a win.

Surrey First Education (SFE) also installed all their candidates on school board.

SFE school trustees retained their seats, while incumbent independent Trustee Charlene Dobie lost her spot at the Surrey Board of Education table Saturday night.

SFE Trustees Terry Allen, Laurie Larsen and Shawn Wilson were re-elected, while their SFE running mates Bob Holmes, Gary Tymoschuk and Garry Thind also handily won a seat.

Surrey voters elect six of the seven trustees. Independent Trustee Laurae McNally, who is White Rock’s representative on the board, was acclaimed.

Dobie was running with an unofficial coalition of six candidates called Surrey Progressives, none of whom were successful. Dobie was elected in 2011, serving one term as trustee.

Larsen was the top vote getter, followed by newcomer Holmes, who is the former co-chair of the Surrey District Parent Advisory Council.

Larsen was elated with the result, saying she never, at any time, has been at the top of the polls.

While Thind has no board of education experience, Tymoschuk served on the Surrey board from 1996-1999 and was a city councillor between 1999 and 2005.

Two Surrey trustee seats were vacated by longtime former trustees Pam Glass and Reni Masi, who both retired this year.

There was a lot to celebrate in Surrey, as a large number of people hit the polls on Saturday, with reports of half-hour line-ups at the 52 voting stations across the city.

In total, 88,897 people came out to vote, with another 11,747 casting ballots at the advanced polling stations.

In all, it meant a 35-per-cent voter turnout of the 287,589 registered voters.

It was expected to be a tight race between the three top polling mayoral candidates, but Hepner took an early lead and kept it.

With the departure of outgoing Mayor Dianne Watts, there were seven vying for the centre chair. The four others were independents Vikram Bajwa, John Edwards, Grand Rice and John Wolanski.

Surrey had to elect a mayor, eight councillors and six school trustees (the seventh is chosen by White Rock voters).

Mayor

Linda Hepner 50,782

Doug McCallum 27,982

Barinder Rasode 21,764

Grant Rice 1,764

John Edwards 1,106

Vikram Bajwa 737

John Wolanski 479

Councillor

Tom Gill 52,338

Judy Villeneuve 49.210

Barbara Steele 44,469

Mary Martin 43,937

Bruce Hayne 41,877

Dave Woods 41,167

Mike Starchuk 40,181

Vera LeFranc 37,597

——————————–

Rina Gill 28,100

Michael Bose 27,178

Kal Dosanjh 26,970

Justin Thind 24,514

Beau Simpson 19,981

Laurie Guerra 18,553

Narima Dela Cruz 18,075

Brian Young 17,491

Darlene Bowyer 15,877

Brenda Locke 15,854

Maz Artang 14,353

Merv Bayda 14,055

Saira Aujla 12,529

Jim McMurtry 9,502

Stephen Gammer 9,433

Cliff Blair 9,182

Nav Dhonaya 9,011

Tanvir Tanni Bhupal 8,913

Gary Hoffman 8,281

Martin Rooney 7,713

Rita Elvins 7,613

Fiona Dionne 5,714

James Duncan 5,612

Shawn Francis 5,588

Rick Scorsese 3,368

Obi Canuel 2,872

Touraj Ghanbar-Zadeh 1,411

School trustee

Laurie Larsen 49,442

Bob Holmes 46,142

Shawn Wilson 45,931

Garry Thind 45,424

Terry Allen 44,047

Gary Tymoschuk 41,517

—————————————

Jonathan Silveira 21,390

Sukhy Dhillon 18,366

Charlene Dobie 17,256

Kristy Peterson 16,072

Balraj Atwal 14,630

Bal Sabharwal 14,518

Harman Singh 13,787

Rayman Bhuller 13,255

Patricia Enair 12,020

Sara Sharma 11,333

Rina Diaz 10,611

Julie Tapley 10,362

Forrest Smith 9,655

Sikander Hayat 9,547

Niovi Patsicakis 9,212

David Matta 8,164

Nicole Joliet 7,062

 

Surrey Now Leader

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