Prince Rupert Voters send mainly familiar names back to Council for four year terms of office

The Auditorium of the Jim Ciccone Civic Centre was the home
for the 2022 Municipal and School Board election in Prince Rupert on Saturday

The 2022 Municipal election is in the books and when it comes to the next four years, many of the elected will have a good grounding in how municipal politics go. 

With a large number of experienced candidates returning to office,  one in particular following a few years away from the duties of civic office.

The Polls were open from 8AM to 8PM, and the first results from the City's Elections officials were delivered shortly after 10 PM, the tallies confirming the successful from those who came close, but didn't reach the spot required for a Council seat for 2022.

Such was the delay in turning out the tallies, that a CBC Radio program focused on the North and Interior results went off the air before any numbers from Prince Rupert were presented.

The first of the familiar names for civic governance over the next four years comes from the Prince Rupert Mayor's race where Herb Pond makes a return to Third Avenue West's City Hall, the former two-term mayor from earlier this century gained the largest vote count of the four candidates on the evening.  

That as Mr. Pond claimed the Mayoralty with 1,486 votes, claiming 51.5 percent of the Mayor's vote, 601 more than his next nearest competitor Chrystopher Thompson, Jason Hoang came in third, with Stephen Fitzpatrick far off the pace in fourth place.

click to enlarge

On Prince Rupert City Council, the only new name for the six council seats comes by way of Teri Forster's successful campaign for office. 

Ms. Forster claimed the third highest amount of votes on the night at 1755.

Topping the return to office for incumbents was Councillor Barry Cunningham with 2,075 votes, he was followed by Wade Niesh, Reid Skelton-Morven, Nick Adey and Gurvinder Randhawa.

The 2022 quest for Sheila Gordon-Payne to take a seat at City Hall came up short; while newcomer Andy Chugh finished in the eighth spot in his council race debut.

click to enlarge

Election Day itself provided no excuses for voters to take pass on their civic duty, sunshine was the feature of the day and that meant a number of voters arrived in the mid day period, something which made for a line up at the entrance to the Jim Ciccone Civic Centre at times with more line ups found  inside the Voting area of the Auditorium. 

That as voters found their spot among the alphabet cards to claim their ballot, made their mark and inserted their selections into one of two voting machines in the Auditorium.  A process which took about twenty to twenty five minutes in the peak period of the afternoon.

Those a bit wiser in time management arrived earlier in the day, later in the afternoon, or voted in one of the two Advance polls which delivered higher participation rates this year.

That however did not provide for any bump upwards in the voter participation rate. 

The latest unofficial data indicating a 32 percent turnout, which is on par with that of the 2018 vote and significantly lower than the 2014 vote which saw a 47 percent voter turnout.

In total, 2,888 of the 8,970 eligible voters in Prince Rupert cast a ballot.

The Mayor and Councillors from tonight's election victories will take their seats in the Chamber in November.

The incumbents from the 2018 election have one more council session in their term to go. 

That is set for October 24th when Mayor Lee Brain, and. Councillor Blair Mirau will have opportunity to make their farewells to elected office ... for  those who are departing,  a temporary pause in their political life for now perhaps.

We'll have more notes on the 2022 Municipal and School Board elections when we pick up our coverage of the post vote themes on Monday.

You can review the 2022 campaign themes through our archive page here.