Barinder Rasode all but jumps in Surrey mayors' race

Only one Surrey mayor in the past 60 years has won a fourth straight term. Until Thursday, I was convinced that Dianne Watts would easily do it this fall — and she may indeed do so. But it appears she has a formidable challenger, who has been prepping carefully for a showdown.

Coun. Barinder Rasode has served two terms on Surrey council. A recruit by Watts' Surrey First organization from the left-leaning Surrey Civic Coalition, she is bright, savvy and very well-connected. Reports published Thursday, and her own comments, indicated that she had left Surrey First, and would run for mayor only if Watts chose not to. That seemed unlikely, and reports later in the day seemed to indicate that she is definitely gunning for the top job.

Watts has been on council since 1997, and been mayor since defeating incumbent Doug McCallum in 2005. In the process, she torpedoed the Surrey Electors Team. The SET members of council elected in that election eventually all came over to her, and together they formed Surrey First, which won every seat on council in the 2011 election. However, that kind of dominating power inevitably begins to crumble.
While Watts remains very popular in the city, and has not really done much to offend a lot of voters, there are a number of issues which bother some people. The expensive new city hall is seen by some as over-the-top, with amenities that aren't really necessary in what is supposed to be a utilitarian seat of local government.

Perhaps the issue that dogs her the most is public safety. While Surrey RCMP are generally respected by most citizens, the wave of murders last year seemed to go almost unnoticed for some time. In the fall, Watts finally convened a task force to look into the issue. Then at the end of the year, the shocking murder of Julie Paskall outside the Newton Arena really galvanized the public. Anger and fear levels remain high. Some citizens feel that policing options needed to be looked into more carefully, and if the RCMP are the best choice, they need a lot more officers on the ground, and on the streets.

Rasode is staking out policing concerns as she begins to craft her campaign for the fall. She says that her concerns have not been addressed and is calling for an immediate boost in policing numbers.

Another thing that is dogging Watts is the persistent rumour that she wants to become the Conservative candidate in the new federal riding encompassing South Surrey and White Rock. Incumbent MP Russ Hiebert is not running again. Watts has said nothing about this race, but her lack of comment fuels continual speculation that she is just biding her time before announcing that she will seek the nomination. A Conservative nomination in that riding is a ticket to Ottawa.

Some people also speculate that she is interested in provincial politics, even though she declined to seek the BC Liberal leadership when it was up for grabs in 2011. She has said nothing about that either. She hasn't even said if she is running for mayor. She doesn't have to, but if she is planning to run, Rasode is already getting in on the ground floor.

My colleague Charlie Smith of the Georgia Straight (see link) says that Rasode will scoop up a lot of votes from the left-leaning South Asian community, and I don't disagree. However, there are many South Asian people in Surrey who lean a bit more to the right, so I'm not sure Rasode will automatically win a majority of South Asian votes. Watts has made many connections in that community and will get plenty of support, should she run again. In terms of gaining support from NDP voters, that too will be a challenge for Rasode. Many people who vote NDP provincially don't bother to vote in municipal elections. The weakness and eventual disappearance of left-leaning SCC is partial proof of that. NDP support in Surrey fell sharply in the 2013 provincial election. The NDP lost one of their four seats (and the North Delta seat), and the huge margins enjoyed by Sue Hammell and Harry Bains in 2009, in Surrey-Green Timbers and Surrey-Newton respectively, were sharply diminished.

But despite all those factors, Rasode remains a formidable challenger, should she and Watts square off. The ball is now in the mayor's court. She will have to reveal her intentions soon.

But she needs to keep in mind Surrey voters' fairly constant record of giving mayors about a decade or so in office, and then tossing them out. It happened to her two predecessors, Bob Bose and Doug McCallum. She, like Rasode, had been a member of McCallum's slate. She then left, ran against him, and won. Don Ross before Bose served eight years and then stepped aside. When he ran again in 1990, he was soundly defeated.

Only one Surrey mayor has served more than nine consecutive years in office. His name is Tom Sullivan, and when he was mayor, the correct term was reeve. He was in office from 1910 to 1920, almost a century ago.

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