Tuesday - Dec. 12 - Blogging mayors

🌤 High 6C

Good morning!

Aging is a one-way street. But it happens so gradually that it can be hard to remember what things were like before—especially when you were an adult in that before-time. We cling to childhood memories of a different world, when we were smaller and bound by the rules of others. We more easily forget our younger adult selves, thinking they inhabited the same world, and played by the same rules, as you do now.

Then you get a colleague in their early-20s with tales about microwaves stuck closed with an egg trapped inside, and Christmas tree smuggling, and a Jeep with a hole in the floor and you realize that maybe that’s not the case? Almost every story from Grace brings to mind some concurrent event from 15 years ago. The memories carry a whiff of chaos and unpredictability and stress and figuring out all the adult things in life. These days, life seems more put-together and straightforward. Then I remember that yesterday I herded a neighbour’s escaped bunny into a make-shift prison and wonder what I’ll be thinking in 20 more years time.

– Tyler

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NEWS

How two bloggers seized power

More than your average mayors, Nathan Pachal and Patrick Johnstone know what it means to be “on the record.”

All politicians carry some degree of baggage: words they said or wrote that they might regret today. Those who are somewhat self-aware must also wrestle with the knowledge that their earlier selves may have disagreed with their current work as politicians.

But few maintain publicly available searchable records of more than a decade of opinions, jokes, and everyday musings.

Today, Tyler writes about how Nathan Pachal and Patrick Johnstone went from blogging about how their communities could be better to actually running Langley City and New Westminster—and about how those blogs continue to inform their work as politicians.

This article was written following a joint interview with Pachal and Johnstone. Current Insider members can find a link to watch the full discussion below. To become an Insider, join here.

Related

Need to Know

✈ A plane that crashed at Langley’s airport in May hit a pickup truck on its approach to the runway, the Transportation Safety Board says [Wings Magazine]

🗳 Another call has been issued to find the culprit in a 2022 hit-and-run that killed an Abbotsford man known in the dog-rescue community [CityNews]

👉 All 12 members of CN Rail’s Indigenous Advisory Council have resigned due to disagreements with CN’s stance on reconciliation [CBC]

✅ A massive development that could see more than 1,000 homes built in Mission passed a key council test last week [Mission Record]

🍺 The owners of a hop farm near Agassiz defrauded investors, the BC Securities Commission has found [Agassiz-Harrison Observer]

🏠 The federal government is bringing back stock, pre-approved housing blueprints to expedite the home-building process [Global]

🚔 Langley police investigated four reported kidnappings over the summer, but only one report is believed to have actually involved a crime [Langley Advance Times]

🚗 Chilliwack Mounties said they’ve seen more and more crashes around town over the last month [Fraser Valley Today]

The Agenda

BC United announce two Abbotsford candidates—but not de Jong

A week after the leaking of a poll that suggested BC United was in big trouble in a key Abbotsford stronghold, party leader announced two new candidates in the valley—but not whether the most-prominent local MLA will run again.

BC United leader Kevin Falcon announced last night that the party had picked two candidates to run for the party in the next election.

Karen Long, the president of the BC Farm Museum and a long-time local volunteer in Langley, will run for BC United in the newly created riding of Langley-Abbotsford. The riding includes Murrayville, Aldergrove, Glen Valley, and parts of rural Abbotsford west of Bradner Road.

Markus Delves, meanwhile, will run for the party in Abbotsford-South. Delves is a longtime party member who had sought the party’s nomination in the riding before the next election. He lost to former Abbotsford Mayor Bruce Banman, who won a seat as MLA, then left this September to join the BC Conservatives. You can read our story about how Abbotsford South has been a decade-long thorn in the side of the BC United/Liberals here.

BC United leader Kevin Falcon notably did not re-announce the re-election campaign of Mike de Jong, who has held the riding of Abbotsford-West for eight terms. It was de Jong’s victory in a 1994 by-election that signalled the rise of the BC Liberals and the demise of the Social Credit Party. But now the renamed BC Liberals are facing their own upstart challenger.

Last week, radio host (and former BC Liberal MLA) Jas Johal revealed that a recent private poll of 344 Abbotsford residents had found the BC Conservatives were vastly more popular than the BC United. Falcon’s party has been struggling in the polls ever since the party changed its name from the BC Liberals earlier this year. Recent provincewide poll numbers have seen the BC Conservatives displacing BC United as the preferred option among non-BC NDP voters. Those polls suggest that while the NDP likely has enough support to win re-election next year, the party could win a landslide if it faces a split right-of-centre opposition.

The polling has also led pundits to suggest the potential for a merger between the province’s right-of-centre parties.

As BC United has rolled out its new candidates, the BC NDP has begun to follow suit. Last week, Alexis announced she was running again. And yesterday, in Chilliwack, BC NDP MLA Kelli Paddon also declared that she will seek re-election. Both are seeking their second term.

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