SURREY Connect’s Brenda Locke announced on Wednesday she will run as mayor in the next municipal election in Surrey.
Good luck, Brenda — you will need a LOT of it!
Locke has a history of being a political loser.
As The VOICE has pointed out before, she got only about 13,600 votes when she ran for Surrey Council in 2014 – she was No. 17. She was defeated by not only the successful Surrey First candidates but also candidates like Rina Gill, Kal Dosanjh, Narima Dela Cruz and others.
In the last municipal election, as everybody knows, she won only by joining McCallum’s Safe Surrey Coalition team and ended up getting more than 40,000 votes.
Earlier, the only time that Locke won was in 2001 as a Liberal candidate in Surrey-Green Timbers when the NDP was at an all-time low and Gordon Campbell’s Liberals won 77 of the 79 Assembly seats.
Locke, who defeated incumbent NDP MLA Sue Hammell by less than 2,000 votes in 2001, lost to Hammell in the 2005 election by more than 5,000 votes.
Locke later ran as the federal Liberal Party candidate in Fleetwood—Port Kells in the 2006 and the 2008 federal elections, but lost both times to Conservative incumbent Nina Grewal.
In other words, Locke wins ONLY under super friendly circumstances – once riding the Campbell wave and the second time riding the McCallum wave.
Locke will try and win on the Surrey Police Service issue – one that has already been settled.
The VOICE wrote in the article “Surrey Mayor Doug McCallum deserves fulsome praise for securing funding for Surrey Langley SkyTrain extension” on July 9:
“A part of the mainstream media and some petty politicians have kept attacking McCallum at every opportunity as the mayor has endeavoured to fulfill his election promises of building the Surrey Langley Skytrain extension and replacing the RCMP with a municipal police force. Normally, you would expect the media to praise someone who actually tries to fulfill his election promises.
“Safe Surrey Coalition councillors Doug Elford, Allison Patton, Laurie Guerra and Mandeep Nagra have stuck with McCallum to help fulfill those election promises.
“The screaming minority has been desperately trying to suppress and bully the silent majority. That is the silent majority that voted McCallum and his Safe Surrey Coalition into power with seven out of eight councillors – the lone Surrey First councillor won only by going against her own party’s agenda during the election campaign.
“That is the silent majority that again showed its support for McCallum after three councillors deserted him and the opposition made the replacement of the RCMP with a municipal police force a major issue during the provincial election last year. That majority not only re-elected all the incumbent NDP MLAs but also kicked out a BC Liberal MLA by electing an NDP MLA in his place.
“McCallum’s foes have been humiliated again and again.
“Now they have come up with a joke of a province-wide referendum about keeping the RCMP in Surrey but admitting in advance that they will not win. However, they hope that they will get a substantial number of votes in Surrey to further their propaganda. They have no respect for taxpayers’ money. The provincial government has already made it clear that they support the new Surrey Police Service and there is no question of holding a referendum.”
However, just for the sake of argument, even if Locke wins and tries to disband the Surrey Police Service, she will be in for a huge surprise as the police union will for sure challenge it in court. Logic dictates that the court will favour retaining the Surrey Police Service after all the legal processes and expenditure that have already gone into establishing it – and the NDP government is bound to reject any request to bring back the RCMP.
So dream on, Locke!
