The first of the outsiders has entered the race to become Surrey mayor, but Jinny Sims probably won’t let be the last.
Sims is well-known, both in Surrey and B.C., but has no municipal political experience. Her other political experience, as a one-term NDP MP for Newton-North Delta from 2011-15, and a two-term NDP MLA for Surrey-Panorama from 2017 to the present, has taken up most of the last decade.
However, her term as minister of citizens services from 2017-19 in the first John Horgan cabinet was best-known for a controversy over actions within her office, dealing with support letters for travel visas and potential attempts to block freedom of information requests. She resigned in October, 2019 and although special prosecutor Richard Peck and police found no wrongdoing, she has not been in cabinet since.
Sims is not resigning her provincial seat to run for mayor.
She first became well-known and was very effective as president of the B.C. Teachers Federation from 2004-07, leading the union in a campaign for a better contract and emphasizing conditions within classrooms and teachers’ resultant extra workload. She led the union through a two-week illegal strike in 2005 and gained considerable public support for the union’s position.
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She has formed a new slate, Surrey Forward. This means there will be at least four slates competing for council seats – Safe Surrey Coalition under current Mayor Doug McCallum, Surrey Connect under mayoral candidate Brenda Locke, Sims’ slate and Surrey First, which says it will run a full slate. Other slates may also show up, and almost certainly there will be at least half a dozen candidates for mayor. Eight people ran for mayor in the 2018 election.
The plethora of slates also means there will be a very lengthy list of candidates for the eight council seats, and a very long ballot. Getting to know anything about the candidates will be a challenge for most voters. There were 48 candidates for council seats in 2018.
Incumbency is no guarantee of being elected, either. In 2018, all eight councillors elected had no municipal experience, and only Locke (who topped the polls) had ever held political office – one term as a BC Liberal MLA for Surrey-Green Timbers, from 2001-05. If the 2022 election is anything like 2018, the winning mayoral candidate will likely help elect a good number of councillors on his or her coattails.
Four months out from the Oct. 15 election date, it appears that there will be a four-way split (at the least) for the mayor’s chair. Despite the controversy swirling around McCallum, and criminal charges he is facing that won’t be dealt with until after the election, such a split favours him.
Sims said in announcing her run that “city hall is broken,” but would not take a position on the police transition, which is the most controversial issue and has led to a deep divide on council.
Sims’ comments last December about running for mayor are telling, and are an indication of her thinking – at least at that time.
“When people asked me to run to be the president of the BCTF, I said I would never, ever do that job. I ended up being the president. Then when Jack Layton said to me, ‘Would you run to be an MP?’ and I said hell would freeze over.”
She said a switch to civic politics is “not on my radar right now.”
Voters of Surrey, stay tuned.
Frank Bucholtz writes twice a month for Peace Arch News and at frankbucholtz.blogspot.com