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1/ The chair of the Chilliwack school board was elected as the city's MLA & a by-election will now decide if progressives remain in control or whether the Barry Neufeld-linked trio will gain power. Richard Procee, 1 of 2 well-known candidates says SOGI should be "re-evaluate[d].
![1/ The chair of the Chilliwack school board was elected as the city's MLA & a by-election will now decide if progressives remain in control or whether the Barry Neufeld-linked trio will gain power. Richard Procee, 1 of 2 well-known candidates says SOGI should be "re-evaluate[d].](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EsM14kNVcAA0IZ8.jpg "1/ The chair of the Chilliwack school board was elected as the city's MLA & a by-election will now decide if progressives remain in control or whether the Barry Neufeld-linked trio will gain power. Richard Procee, 1 of 2 well-known candidates says SOGI should be \"re-evaluate[d].")
2/ Procee runs a popular produce market in town, Hofstede's Country Barn. He is also related, through his mother-in-law to the Les family. So there's definitely some political power there. https://www.theprogress.com/community/chilliwack-immigrants-pool-talents-for-women-of-the-world-fair/
3/ Procee's main opponent looks to be Carin Bondar, or, rather, Dr. a fairly prominent biologist and science-media personality communicator. She has a TED talk with 170,000 views on mating in nature AND even a Netflix series?!? https://carinbondar.com/tv-series-host/
4/ There are two other pro-SOGI candidates. They seem knowledgeable. The question is, though, will the non-SOGI-denier crowd split the vote of those who want to accept and move beyond a topic that has been settled by the province?
5/ This, in part, is a re-tread of the provincial election. When Laurie Throness sought to retain his seat in Chilliwack-Kent riding. Despite losing the BC Liberal endorsement, he remained on the ballot with the BC Liberals and faced a split opposition. That seemed good for him.
6/ After all, it was Chilliwack, and not only was the NDP candidate relatively little-known and the Greens got 14% in the previous election, but Jason Lum - possibly the most prominent city councillor AND a progressive - was running as an independent.
7/ It looked like a perfect recipe for a split. And on election day, Lum got 24% of the vote, and the Green candidate got 8%. BUT the Throness vote collapsed, sinking to just 31%. (He got 53% in 2017.) He lost. As did his crosstown BC Liberal colleague John Martin.
8/ In Chilliwack-Kent, the NDP/Green/Lum vote was 68% of the total. (Lum likely siphoned off a bunch of very mainstream BC Liberals uncomfortable with Throness.)
9/ In the Chilliwack riding there was a prominent Conservative candidate who got 16% of the vote. There was a big split. But even so, the NDP and Greens combined for 52% of ballots.
10/ Anyways, that's the equation at the moment. It's entirely possible that the pro-SOGI school board vote gets split. Or that large church-driven turnout swings an election that is likely to have very low voter turnout.
11/11 It's also possible that the electoral trends we've seen recently continue, and/or there is relatively large turnout for Bondar among the thousands of highly educated people who have recently moved to the city from Vancovuer.
