By Don Urquhart, Times Chronicle
The hotly contested municipal election in Osoyoos has seen residents avoid “big change”, opting instead for returning Sue McKortoff to the mayor’s seat as a youthful addition was embraced at the councilor level. Osoyoos First slate’s Johnny Cheong and Zach Poturica will join incumbents Jim King and Myers Bennett as councilors.
A total of 2,101 of the 4,769 eligible voters turned out to cast their ballots an increase of 986 votes over 2018 numbers, representing a voter turnout of 44 per cent, up from 38.7 per cent in 2018 when 1,593 residents voted from the 4,120 who were eligible.
“I’m very pleased of course, I’m happy to do this for another four years,” a visibly weary but relieved McKortoff said. “I think I have a good background and a good understanding of the community and it was a much closer race than in other years but I am very happy.”
McKortoff outpaced her mayoral competitor Dustin Sikora at each of the advanced voting days and continued that lead into the regular voting day on Saturday, Oct. 15 perhaps suggesting that the scandal over election signs by the husband of her campaign finance manager had no bearing on the vote. In the end, McKortoff captured 52.8 per cent of the vote versus Sikora’s 46.3 per cent.
When asked if she felt vindicated by the results after a bruising week where Osoyoos First did their best to connect the dots between the sign incident and her campaign she said: “I guess so, but I was still ahead in the first and second advance polls before this even happened,” she said. And that lead continued in the regular voting day, nearly four days after the sign incident had occurred.
“I think people were looking first for some change and I think this is the absolute best way to do it. We’ve got three people that have been on council and two people who are new and that’s the best way forward.”
Sikora on the other hand sparked controversy from day one because of his $23,000 support of the so-called “Freedom Convoy” along with fiery rhetoric over what he and his Osoyoos First running mates say has been serious inaction by the current council and mayor on issues like drinking water, sewage and a number of other issues in town.
Some observers have suggested that his reaction to the election sign tampering may not have done him any favours on the final polling day as he may have come across as overbearing to some. But again, his polling across the three days lagged McKortoff consistently.
Speaking positively on what surely must have been a disappointment Sikora said: “We’ve got a couple fresh new guys so we’re really happy with what we put in place here with the new council and we fought as hard as we could, there’s just some stuff that you can’t overcome. ”
“Being a young guy, being the new guy, all that, I think that we gave a run for the money and the biggest thing is we showed that the previous council wasn’t doing a good enough job and the community spoke and now they realize they’re gonna have to dust their shoes off a little bit,” he said.
He added that if they were to do it all over again, they wouldn’t change much. As to whether he would run again he said: “Oh I don’t know! After this I don’t know,” he laughs.
As for the four council seats, the two incumbents – King and Bennett returned to office along with two new, younger candidates – Porturica and Cheong elected to their first official council roles. King and Bennett both received significantly less votes that Porturica and Cheong who received 1,510 and 1,554 respectively. In fact Cheong took top place, securing more votes than any other candidate followed by Porturica.
A third Osoyoos First candidate, Wes Greve and independent Sy Murseli did not secure enough votes to overtake either Bennett or King although Greve wasn’t far off with only 134 votes separating him from Bennett.
Porturica noted the turnout was better this year and that was a point of satisfaction. “We had a good group of volunteers that helped us get there and get the vote out,” he said.
“I have no idea how those came to be, to be honest,” Cheong said of his substantial vote count. Like Porturica he highlighted “we have a great team, great support staff and that really helped with all our success and I’m just looking forward to the next four years.”
King commented that it was nice to see McKortoff re-elected and “bring some balance to the town”. He added that it was “a hard fought campaign and the kids definitely know a lot of people in town so it’s great to have some young people in council.”
Similarly Bennett said it was a good result for Osoyoos saying, “we’ve got experience and we’ve also got two excellent young fellows that we can work with. It showed us that the young people want to get out there and want to see things get done in the community and they’re going to push Zach and Johnny and get their message out to them and let’s make things happen as a team.”
Vote tallies can be found here.
CivicInfoBC graphic.
