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
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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
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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
