The New West Progressives will be focusing their efforts on winning council and school trustee seats in their first election campaign.
The group, founded in 2017, will run four candidates for councillor and four for school trustee but has opted not to run a mayoral candidate in the Oct. 20 election. To date, no one has come forward indicating they will be running against incumbent mayor Jonathan Cote.
“We really deliberated long and hard. We did have some, I would say, fairly good candidates that came in for the mayoral, but I think this first round we really felt as a team to present ourselves to the people of New Westminster, this would be a very good first step in introducing eight candidates and give the public an opportunity to see us, both at the school board and at city council,” said Daniel Fontaine, one of the group’s council candidates and a founder of the New West Progressives.
The New West Progressives advised Cote that they have chosen not to run a mayoral candidate.
“We also felt it was very important that we wanted to send the message that our team will work with whomever is the mayor,” Fontaine told the Record. “If it’s Jonathan Cote, we make the commitment that we will work collaboratively with him. If it’s someone else that ends up getting elected, we will work with that mayor as well.”
Fontaine said he’s previously worked with Cote, when serving as a member of the mayor’s task force on public engagement, and would have “no problem” working with him to strengthen and improve New Westminster.
