Back to the future? Penticton’s mayoral race looks a lot like 2011

One mayor is hoping to keep his seat in the Penticton council chamber, while another former mayor is trying to get his old job back.

Incumbent mayor Julius Bloomfield is up against former mayor and MLA Dan Ashton, and the ballot boxes in Penticton have seen this match-up before.

If you’ve lived in the city for long enough you might realize that this is a rematch of the 2011 mayoral race. Ashton and Bloomfield both ran a tight race with Ashton eking out a win by just 146 votes.

This time, the roles are reversed since Bloomfield is the incumbent and Ashton is the challenger, but he has a long political history in the city.

Ashton was first elected as a city councillor in 1999 and served until 2008 when he won his race for mayor. He served as the city’s mayor until 2013 when he was elected as a BC Liberal MLA. He sat through the party’s rebranding as BC United and stepped down before the party decided to cancel its campaign in 2024.

Bloomfield didn’t give up on politics after his loss to Ashton in 2011, he came back and was elected as a councillor in 2018 then as mayor in 2022.

When the nomination deadline was approaching it seemed like Bloomfield was going to run unopposed but then five other candidates, including Ashton, hopped into the race just before their paperwork was due.

Ashton won the 2008 mayoral election in a landslide. He received 4,704 votes and the runner-up, incumbent Jake Kimberley received just 1,478.

Bloomfield’s mayoral win in 2022 was much tighter. He won with 3,374 votes and the runner-up, Jason Reynen, received 3,155.

The other four candidates for mayor in this month’s municipal election — Corey Hounslow, Jordan Iannone, Beverley Kohler and Ashley Murrin — don’t have the advantage that comes with having already won a mayoral race in the past. Selling your experience to voters who already know your name goes a long way.

There were controversies during both Ashton and Bloomfield’s time as mayor.

Ashton kept taxes low while he was mayor. There was a three-year stretch where taxes decreased by 0.5 per cent, but he came under fire after he left office because city officials said those lean years kicked the can down the road and created financial problems for the next council.

Bloomfield’s time as mayor has been chaotic, but not necessarily of his own accord. Three city councillors — Amelia Boultbee, Helena Konanz and James Miller — left council before the term was up. Miller because he was convicted of historic sex crimes and the other two left to take higher government office.

We’ve seen this matchup before, but the world has changed over the past 15 years.

Advance voting in the municipal election opened, Oct. 7. General election day is Saturday, Oct. 17.