Now that the nomination period is over, we know who will be running for municipal public office in New Westminster in 2018. We have:
- 4 mayoral candidates (1 will be elected)
- 14 city council candidates (6 will be elected)
- 16 school trustee candidates (7 will be elected)
New Westminster’s election isn’t as chaotic as Vancouver’s. We don’t have anybody running under an alias (unless you count James “Jimmie” Bell), we don’t have anybody running for two positions, and we don’t have anybody running who lives outside of New Westminster.
Update: After some comments on Facebook and discussions I’ve had, I’ve removed the map. Although candidates’ addresses are (currently) public information, making this information more widely disseminated can potentially discourage some to put their names forward, as home addresses can be used by people who aren’t so nice to do not so nice things.
The geographical information of where candidates do and do not live is still interesting, however! Here’s a little summary of which candidates live in which neighbourhoods (as defined by the city’s Residents’ Association Boundaries map):
Connaught Heights
No candidates.
West End
Troy Hunter (council)
Moody Park
Mark Gifford (school trustee)
Chinu Das (council)
Mary Trentadue (council)
Chuck Puchmayr (council)
Glenbrooke North
Cathy McCallum (school trustee)
Ellen Vaillancourt (council)
Nikki Binns (mayor)
J.P. Leberg (school trustee)
Douglas Woodward (school trustee)
Massey Victory Heights
Lisa Graham (school trustee)
Brow of the Hill
Paul McNamara (council)
Steve Tsonev (school trustee)
Benny Ogden (council)
Angela Sealy (council)
Nadine Nakagawa (council)
Patrick Johnstone (council)
James Bell (mayor)
Queens Park
Bryn Ward (council)
Alejandro Diaz (school trustee)
Daniel Fontaine (council)
McBride Sapperton
Jaimie McEvoy (council)
Cyrus Sy (school trustee)
Mary Lalji (school trustee)
Danielle Connelly (school trustee)
Maya Russell (school trustee)
Scott McIntosh (school trustee)
Dee Beattie (school trustee)
Anita Ansari (school trustee)
Quayside
Mike Ireland (council)
Downtown
Harm Woldring (mayor)
Jonathan Cote (mayor)
Queensborough
Gurveen Dhaliwal (school trustee)
And just to keep things on the up-and-up, here’s the original (and now kind of redacted) blog post.
What we do have is a map:
It’s pretty easy to see that there are some neighbourhoods that are under-represented (Connaught Heights doesn’t have any candidates, Queensborough, West End, and Massey Victory Heights only have one each) and some that are well-represented (Moody Park and Brow Of The Hill). Sapperton has eight candidates!
Mayoral candidates all live between First and Seventh Streets. Well, I’m not entirely sure if that’s true because Harm Woldring put his residential address to be that of his business downtown. But hey, who am I to say that he doesn’t live there?
Council candidates all live between 13th Street and Cumberland. Only one lives in Sapperton.
School trustee candidates have the largest geographical spread, from Queensborough to Sapperton.
Use this information however you want! Maybe you want to vote for people that live furthest from the Fraser, now you’ve got an easy reference guide!