SURREY – Within minutes of Surrey councillor Barinder Rasode making her run for Surrey mayor official – her former party mates quickly jumped all over her with a release that amounted to personal name calling and accusing Rasode of being divisive.
Surrey First’s mayoral candidate Linda Hepner questioned Rasode’s qualifications for the job of leading Surrey and called her an opportunist.
“After essentially running a campaign office for several months, which she called a ‘community hub’, it’s great to finally have transparency, and I welcome her to the race,” said Councillor Hepner.
“However, running a city takes more than one individual. It takes a team with experience. What this election is really about is who can do the best job for Surrey, and as we’ve seen, Barinder is accustomed to leaving teams in order to further her personal ambitions.”
Hepner continued with the personal attack, saying Rasode was all about ego and not a team player.
“Our team will once again put Surrey first, and ego second. Barinder takes us back to the days of a divided city council when it was hard to get anything done because politics got in the way of doing what was best for Surrey,” Hepner said.
Many political pundits were left a little taken back by the Surrey First release even though they have been anticipating a nasty fight as we head towards the election on November 15 but this kind of personal attacks were a bit much. Some speculated that Surrey First sees Rasode as the real challenger to their monopoly on council and the mayor’s chair and that is why they came out so strongly against Rasode immediately following her announcement.
Hepner went further in dressing down of Rasode, saying Surrey First didn’t think she was capable of being an effective leader for Surrey and that is why the party didn’t choose her.
“Barinder left the Surrey Civic Coalition when she couldn’t win there, then joined Surrey First to get elected. When it was clear our team didn’t think she was capable of being an effective leader for Surrey, she left behind our collaborative, successful team to put herself first,” Hepner added.
But Hepner has been stuck with her own baggage of being seen as even less effective than Rasode with her laughable announcements when she was first declared as a mayoral candidate by Surrey First.
According to the party, after Surrey First leader Mayor Dianne Watts announced she was not running for re-election, Surrey First Councillors Linda Hepner, Judy Villeneuve, Tom Gill, Bruce Hayne, Barbara Steele, Mary Martin – and at the time – Barinder Rasode selected Linda Hepner as their new team leader. Barinder Rasode then left the slate.
“This is a classic case of Barinder first, not Surrey first,” said Gill. “
But despite the heavy dose of vitriolic outbursts from her former party, Rasode didn’t directly respond to Surrey First’s accusations.
