Dieter Dudy finished second to Reid Hamer-Jackson in Saturday's election (Image Credit: CFJC Today)

By Chad Klassen

2022 MUNICIPAL ELECTION

Dudy not surprised by ‘anger’ votes as all three incumbent councillors ousted from city hall

Oct 17, 2022 | 3:41 PM

KAMLOOPS — The three incumbent councillors who hoped to jump into the mayor’s chair are now out at city hall.

Dieter Dudy, Sadie Hunter and Arjun Singh placed second to fourth on Saturday night (Oct. 15), marking the end of their runs on council for at least another four years.

It started out as an optimistic night at Dudy’s headquarters downtown, but as the results rolled in, he soon realized he wouldn’t be going back to city hall.

“It’s disappointing only in so far as I had a vision that could’ve moved the city forward and address a lot of the issues that it has,” said Dudy. “The city has the right to make its own decisions and I’m not going to second-guess that.”

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Dudy feels voters wanted change and moved away from any of the current councillors running for mayor, allowing Reid Hamer-Jackson to come up the middle and win the race.

“I’m not surprised. There were a lot of people who expressed a whole lot of anger over the last while, looking for someone is going to maybe coming across that magic bullet that’s going to make everything go away,” said Dudy. “It’s unfortunate they haven’t allowed us to go ahead with the plans we had, but we’ll see. We’ll see what happens.”

Singh, who finished fourth — 5,000 vote behind Hamer-Jackson, 2,700 away from Dudy and 1,600 votes short of Sadie Hunter — says he too understands some of the anger that’s in the community

“I’m surprised by the result, but I’m also understanding the frustration feel out there,” said Singh. “Best wishes to the new council. They’ve got a big job ahead of them and I hope can collaborate as much as possible and work together and respect each other.”

Singh, who has been on council for 14 years, says it’s been an honour serving the community. In 2018, he was the top-voted council, but doesn’t regret giving up his council seat to run for mayor.

“I knew I was taking a risk,” he noted. “Good job on Reid, Sadie, Dieter, Ray — everybody that ran. The folks that came ahead of me they legitimately came ahead of me. I’m very humbled. I’ve had a lot of nice messages of support and sadness that I didn’t do better, but that’s elections.”

Meanwhile, Ray Dhaliwal finished last out of the five candidates, spending his 66th birthday Saturday night in defeat.

“I would’ve had a campaign manager, but as you know I started off with [the Action 22 Kamloops] slate. That sort of went sideways and some of the people that started with my slate started their own mini-slate, so near the end I was a bit scrambly trying to do everything on my own instead of having a campaign manager,” said Dhaliwal.

Hunter was not available for an interview with CFJC Today on Monday (Oct. 17).