ROTHENBURGER – It’s an election year; silly season is coming

WELCOME to Silly Season — it’s an election year.

The term  “silly season” was coined to describe the uneventful media days of late summer when the kids were out of school, everybody was at the beach, and politicians were in recess along with everyone else.

Reporters were reduced to covering the weather, someone’s 29 hand in cribbage, potatoes that look like Elvis and other such tidings that now became the stuff of front-page headlines.

“There’s no such thing as a slow news day,” we’d tell our news staff. “Only slow reporters.”

Over time, though, “silly season” became identified with the months leading up to civic elections, when incumbents and newbies begin promising us the moon, the stars and responsible spending.

It usually began in the fall of election year as the dog days waned and community life re-started. But it kicks in earlier and earlier as the years pass. In November 2025, Coun. Dale Bass proclaimed that silly season was already underway, almost a year before the 2026 civic election.

That was premature but the real silly season will arrive any day now. Council members will be pressing the flesh at every ribbon cutting, charity event and community gathering they can find.

They will promise to trim the fat from the City’s budget, to be transparent and responsive, to bring new development to town, to solve all the things they’ve been unable to solve in the first three years of their term. They’ll sound more caring, more considerate of taxpayer concerns.

Every word they utter will be in the context of whether it will help or hurt their chances for another term. In the background, they’ll be busy preparing their campaigns and pondering whether it’s better to announce their candidacies sooner, or maybe later.

Wannabes have big targets to shoot at. They will focus on the dysfunction at City Hall, on the failure to resolve homelessness and crime, on the incumbent council’s penchant for shutting down public input, on the ballooning cost of capital projects, on the use of the unpopular Alternative Approval Process to ram those projects through.

They will promise “positive change,” a return to civility at City Hall, “bold leadership.” And there will be an increase in notices of motion from incumbents trying to convince the hoi polloi they have the answers to everything if people would just listen.

What will this pre-election environment do to the hostility we’ve seen around the horseshoe these past three years? Will council members suddenly start getting along in order to put their best foot forward for voters? Will the sniping between the mayor and eight councillors be toned down?

I fear not. I worry it will get even worse, especially if this week’s council meeting is any indication..

“Us vs. them” populism will grow in intensity as spring approaches in River City. It’s a blessing, perhaps, that, like leap year, silly season only comes around every four years. With as many as a half dozen candidates for mayor and three dozen for councillor, this could be the silliest ever.

Mel Rothenburger is a former regular contributor to CFJC-TV and CBC radio, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, and a Webster Foundation Commentator of the Year finalist. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor.  He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca. This column is also published in the January edition of the Kamloops Chronicle.