It is going to be a crazy election fight this year in Surrey if Barinder Rasode keeps going with her bid for mayor. She has got some heavyweights with her, including Mark Marissen (very experienced hand at rounding up the Indo vote for the federal Liberals), Jatinder Rai and, I hear, a veteran Conservative campaigner who worked on Christy Clark’s campaign.
Then, as we saw this week, Linda Hepner and Surrey First came out with a new team, plus their own set of heavy-hitting campaigners: Stew Braddick and Mike Witherly. Also, as I tweeted out on the day of the announcement, Patrick Kinsella is in the mix. Observers pointed out to me that my picture of Patrick also included Prem Vinning.
Needless to say, Mayor Dianne Watts made a point of boosting the Linda Hepner/Surrey First campaign with an unequivocal endorsement.
I’ve also just heard that former mayor Doug McCallum is planning to announce a run sometime in early July.
My Globe story on Hepner’s announcement is here. Kelly Sinoski at the Vancouver Sun was also present and, if you can get past the paywall to read it, her story with details I didn’t have is here.