It will be easier to win a councillor’s seat in the Oct. 20th municipal elections in the Langleys than it will be for mayoralty candidates to capture a mayor’s chair.
If you’re running for mayor, you need a lot of people to like you – and they have to like you the most, or at least perceive you as the most competent candidate on the ballot.
Second best only means one of your opponents got the vote.
When you’re trying to slide into a councillor’s slot, however, being second best is just fine. In fact, being third, fourth, fifth, or sixth best will get you the vote you need in Langley City.
And in the Township, where every voter gets to cast up to eight votes to pick the councillors, being someone’s eighth choice is just as good as being their first.
In fact, if you’re one of the 23 candidates running for a councillor’s seat in the Township this time around, you could be every voter’s eighth favourite contender and still top the polls by a large margin on election day.
The Muriel Arnason Library is named after a lady who was one of Langley’s longest serving Township councillors. I knew many people who practically worshipped her, and no doubt when it came to marking their ballots, her name was among the first to get their check mark (although an X or any mark obviously signifying your choice will do, technically you’re supposed to use a check).
I also knew plenty of people who didn’t like her or her political views very much at all – and she was one of their last picks. But they did vote for her, because they knew that, while one of seven council members can’t stop legitimate business, her often contrary voice kept things out in the open.
Everybody knew Muriel, and whatever the reasons, or wherever she ranked in voters’ preferences, for decades she was on the list of winners – and often at the top of that list – when the ballots were counted.
So the lesson is, if you’re running for mayor, you need to convince as many people as possible that you’re the best.
But if you’re running for councillor, you need to convince people that you’re good or… well… sort of all right… or… not too bad, at any rate… but just remember the name, okay?