The gloves came off during this civic election campaign.
Delta voters will head to the polls this Saturday to decide their next city council and school board in what turned out to be a heated, and sometimes personal, campaign, the most intense and bitter witnessed here in a long time.
This year’s campaign has six vying for the mayor’s seat that’s being vacated by Lois Jackson after six terms. The last civic election in 2014 saw Jackson acclaimed when nobody stepped forward to run against her.
The council race, which featured only 13 candidates last time, has a field of 20, including Jackson, who is running on former CAO George Harvie’s Achieving for Delta slate. Fourteen of the council candidates are part of the three main slates, while there are also six independents in the race.
Harvie, two-term councillor Sylvia Bishop and former police chief Jim Cessford are the leading contenders to replace Jackson, although three independents – Moneca Kolvyn, Alex Megalos and Vytas Vaitkus - are also in the race for the mayor’s chair.
Harvie has become a lightning rod during the campaign as opponents first questioned his role in the Enviro-Smart controversy and more recently on the golden handshake.
Bishop described the Enviro-Smart issue as “corrosive” and one that “diminishes the public’s confidence in city hall.” Openly critical of city hall every chance he gets, Cessford has campaigned on the need for change.
Harvie, who is running on his record as the city’s top bureaucrat for 17 years, has called the attacks by his opponents “baseless” and “shameful.”
The mayoral forums have been well attended and relatively uneventful, but it’s on social media where a lot of fireworks have been taking place.
The race for the seven school trustee positions sees all the incumbents, except Fabian Milat, seeking re-election. Changes in this campaign see long-time trustee Dale Saip now running on his own, while first-term trustee Rhiannon Bennett, who ran in the last election with Bruce Reid on the Kids Matter ticket, form her own group with newcomers in Mita Naidu and Andrea Hilder.
Reid is running once again under the Kids Matter banner, but this time with a pair of newcomers in Randy Anderson-Fennell and Victor Espinoza.
The 2014 election finished with a 31.8 per cent voter turnout, but it looks like that will be well exceeded this time around if the numbers for the three days of advanced polls are any indication. Overall, 5,175 cast a ballot at the advanced polls, compared to just 2,246 in the last election.
Those planning to vote this Saturday should have already received in the mail their “Where to Vote” cards in the mail. For more information about how and where to vote, check out the City of Delta’s election page at www.delta.ca/your-government/elections.
