BUCHOLTZ: 2026 is shaping up to be an interesting year in Surrey politics

Published 7:00 am Thursday, January 8, 2026

The year 2026 will see much more focus on municipal politics, with local elections taking place in October.

Surrey politics will attract a lot of interest, with a likely four-way mayor’s race. There will be more than four candidates, of course, but it appears very likely that it will be four candidates that split most of the votes cast.

They will be incumbent Mayor Brenda Locke of Surrey Connect, former mayor Doug McCallum (who has not yet announced his intentions), with Safe Surrey Coalition, Surrey First Coun. Linda Annis, who will represent the longstanding slate first put together by Dianne Watts, and former Surrey First councillor and one-term NDP MLA Mike Starchuk. Starchuk has put together a new political slate called Imagine Surrey.

Mayors, of course, often can do little on their own, as several independent mayors over the years in larger B.C. communities have shown. Even when Bob Bose was Surrey’s mayor from 1987 to 1996, his Surrey Civic Electors (SCE) never had a majority on council. That crimped their agenda, although in general Bose was able to accomplish much of what he set out to do.

The current makeup of council has Locke and four members of Surrey Connect holding a bare majority. Two seats are held by Surrey First and two others by Safe Surrey Coalition members. Thus far, all members of council have stuck with their slates, although switching from one slate to another does happen frequently in Surrey politics.

In some cases, such as Starchuk’s, a new slate is formed either to fill a perceived political void or to be in total command of a campaign.

Starchuk’s entry in the race for mayor is interesting. He was on Surrey council for one term, from 2014-18, as part of Surrey First. All nine members of council elected in 2014 were part of Surrey First. However, he placed seventh in total votes, with more than 12,000 fewer votes than Tom Gill, who topped the polls.

Surrey First blew apart in the run-up to the 2018 election, as its dominance caused it to ignore many genuine community issues. A dispute over who should succeed incumbent Linda Hepner as the mayoral candidate led to the formation of a competing slate, Integrity Now, headed by Surrey First incumbent Bruce Hayne, who ran against Surrey First candidate Gill and McCallum, who had been out of office for 13 years. The resulting three-way split put McCallum, and seven of eight untried municipal politicians, into office with Safe Surrey Coalition.

Starchuk says Locke’s mishandling of the police transition is a prime reason he is running, and he says he can work well with Premier David Eby, as a former member of the legislature. That may not be a strong selling point. Much of the mishandling of the police transition resulted from provincial decisions, notably the refusal to put the matter to referendum. The initial paltry amount offered to help pay transition costs was also a sore point with many Surrey residents.

In addition, Eby is not particularly popular in Surrey, as the 2024 provincial election results show.

It is unsure if Imagine Surrey will be directly connected to the NDP. That strategy was tried by SCE almost 40 years ago, and while it managed to elect four candidates, as noted above, SCE never was able to win a majority of seats. Traditionally, Surrey residents have preferred to elect members of council who don’t take orders from any provincial political party.

There will be many issues raised during the campaign, and many Surrey residents will be watching closely.

Frank Bucholtz writes twice monthly on political issues for Black Press Media publications.