DOUBLE ELECTION 2026: Running for office, how bad could it be?

Apparently pretty bad…

Heavy is the head that wears the crown, and some in the Thompson-Okanagan learned the hard way that leadership comes at a cost.

For some entering politics for the first time in the Thompson-Okanagan, their rocky tenures have come to an abrupt end, including a Kelowna MLA and two former Penticton city councillors. Perhaps the roughest four years goes to the mayor of Kamloops, however, whose hope for another term is still alive.

Reid Hamer-Jackson

Kamloops Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson has become the poster child for dysfunctional politics in BC over the past four years. The job has cost him his business, hundreds of thousands of dollars and nearly his home.

He was elected in 2022 in his first political campaign, amassing a fervent base that swelled behind his promises to hold BC Housing, non-profits and city staff “accountable.” The term has become a spectacle among local governments for a mayor who refuses to be restrained, while his salary and responsibilities are now barely measurable after numerous conduct violations, bullying and harassment investigations and a failed lawsuit.

His latest blow is a court order that he repay a city councillor, whom he sued for defamation, roughly $250,000 in estimated legal fees and damages after the case was dismissed. It comes as banks foreclose on his business and he narrowly avoided his home going up for a tax sale auction.

James Miller

Former newspaper editor and one-term city councillor James Miller couldn’t escape his past when he took office in Penticton. He is now a convicted sex offender after his 2022 election caught the attention of a victim in Ontario Miller thought he left behind.

An Ontario court heard testimony from that man, who said he started a “movement” to bring Miller back to Sarnia for trial upon finding out he was elected to public office.

“I couldn’t sit there and not do anything, knowing what he did to me and he’s on the other side of Canada where nobody knows,” the man told the court in May.

His campaign to publicly tarnish Miller’s reputation led to an acquittal for some charges, but Miller was still convicted in connection to the sexual abuse two other victims said they endured as young boys in the early 1990s.

Most of Miller’s four-year term was spent on suspension before he became the first local politician in BC to be disqualified because of a criminal conviction.

Tara Armstrong

The looming threat of a recall petition never materialized for the Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream MLA, but Tara Armstrong’s term in the Legislature was still cut short. She stepped back from seeking re-election after bouncing between two parties then to sit as an independent.

Her election campaign started with a refusal to take part in any public election forums and she refused media interviews in the following two years. While in office, her record included an effort to abolish the BC Human Rights Code, proposing a ban on Indigenous land acknowledgements, targeting trans youth, and proposing a bill that would replace Truth and Reconciliation Day with a day to honour the Freedom Convoy.

Armstrong’s rebound from the BC Conservatives to join the far-right OneBC ended with the two-MLA party’s rift over a staffer’s antisemitic leanings. Rumblings of a recall campaign started immediately after, but it never came together. She claimed to have tried mending the rift with OneBC ahead of the election, but they would not take her back.

“As for OneBC, I won’t rehash last year. What I do want you to know is that we tried to work with Dallas. We really did. And we tried to reconcile with her before the election, too,” she said in a statement to social media.

Her tenure ultimately lasted two years.

Amelia Boultbee

She was a first-time city councillor just four years ago, and that launched Amelia Boultbee from city hall to Conservative MLA to independent to NDP to finally declining to seek re-election citing a lack of support.

“Because I crossed the floor so recently, I am unable to marshal the kind of campaign necessary to give the NDP a fair shot in this snap election. I am stepping aside not because I want to quit, but to make way for a more winnable candidate in these circumstances,” she said in a statement.

Boultbee initially appeared to thrive in opposition with the BC Conservatives, starting off with an oppositional approach in the 2024 election with a signage dispute. She continued with that approach into her departure from the BC Conservatives after a spat with the party leader and even in arguments online with constituents.

Her floor-crossing caught the Penticton-Summerland BC NDP electoral association by surprise and left some Conservative voters feeling betrayed. She said it led to personal and professional consequences, even citing instances where she was accosted publicly and privately for the decision, which she faced during her time before crossing to the BC NDP as well.

She still called for constituents to vote for the BC NDP as the party selected the candidate Boultbee once beat by 317 votes, Tina Lee.