1 week Ago By Malin Jordan
One of the most-watched ridings in Surrey is currently leaning blue with only a few ballots counted. B.C.
Conservative Elenore Sturko currently holds 56.48% of the vote to 36.79% for the NDP's Mike Starchuk, although numbers are slow to report back - with just 109 votes to 71.
Four candidates campaigned to win votes in Surrey-Cloverdale, where the BC NDP's Mike Starchuk has been the MLA since 2020. Starchuk is defending his seat against Conservative Party candidate Elenore Sturko, B.C.
Green Party candidate Pat McCutcheon, and Freedom Party of B.C. candidate Judy Meilleur.
Starchuk won the riding in 2020 after unseating one-term incumbent Marvin Hunt. He was the first NDP candidate to win the riding in what had been, up until that point, won by B.C.
Liberal Party candidates sine the riding was formed in 1991. Sturko decided to run in the riding after crossing the floor from the B.C.
United Party to sit as a Conservative MLA. She had won the Surrey South riding in a by-election in 2022 after Stephanie Cadieux stepped down to become Canada's first Chief Accessibility Officer. Sturko had been the Shadow Minister for Mental Health, Addiction, Recovery & Education until she joined the Conservative Party.
McCutcheon is a retired professional engineer who ran a consulting business for 25 years. He has lived in Cloverdale for 23 years. Judy Meilleur is running for Freedom Party of B.
C. She did not respond to repeated emails from the Cloverdale Reporter for information about herself and her campaign to win the riding. Surrey-Cloverdale had some severe boundary changes for the 2024 provincial election.
The electoral district lost both West Cloverdale (to Surrey-Serpentine River) and Port Kells (to Surrey-Guildford). It has gained the “panhandle” that jutted up and used to be a part of the riding of Surrey South—the area between 188th Street and 196th Street that stretched up as high as 76th Avenue. Surrey-Cloverdale also now has the Shannon Hill Park and Hunter Park residential areas attached to it.
Those neighbourhoods, below Highway 10, also used to be a part of Surrey South. The riding has not had a multiple-term MLA since Kevin Falcon won the riding three times in a row from 2001 until 2013. The riding will be interesting to watch come election night.
Elenore Sturko, B.C. Conservative Party candidate, is running in the riding after crossing the floor from the B.
C. United Party (former B.C.
Liberal Party) to join the B.C. Conservatives as a sitting MLA for the district of Surrey South.
The B.C. United Party collapsed several weeks ago and withdrew from the election, leaving some of the United candidates to run as B.
C. Conservatives..
