CIVIC ELECTION – O’Reilly easy winner, incumbent councillors not so much
Mayor-elect Mike O’Reilly. (Image: Mel Rothenburger.)
Three returning City councillors will be joined by several rookies
From the first few polls that reported in tonight (Oct. 17 2026), Mike O’Reilly was going to be the next mayor of Kamloops. His lead never wavered as more results came in, and he ended with 13,235 votes or 44.15 per cent in total. It wasn’t nearly as good a night for other council incumbents.
Current mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson not only lost to O’Reilly, he placed fourth among six candidates with 3,916 voters (11.83 per cent). And several high-profile incumbent councillors went down with him. Only three made it back: Katie Neustaeter, Kelly Hall and Margot Middleton.
Newcomer Rob Bertrand finished in first place, with rookies Christopher Mitra, Jesse Ritcey, Steve Bucher and Randy Sunderman also winning seats.
Left out in the cold were incumbent councillors Nancy Bepple, who finished ninth, Stephen Karpuk (12th), Dale Bass (17th), Bill Sarai (19th).
That means there will be a new mayor in the chair, albeit one with experience as a councillor, and only three of eight incumbent councillors.
Polls closed at 8 p.m. but long lineups slowed down the counting, and results from the first three polling stations weren’ t posted until 8:44 p.m. They showed O’Reilly with 47.17 per cent of the vote and he barely moved from there for the rest of the night, finishing with 44.15 per cent, 6,266 votes ahead of second place finisher Nelly Dever when final poll results were posted at 9:33 p.m.
Nelly Dever, who led the Pivot Kamloops slate, finished with 23.2 per cent. Ray Dhaliwal was third with 13.1 per cent, ahead of Hamer-Jackson with his 11.83 per cent.
Ivory Winston had 4.6 per cent and Kris Lloyd-Middleton had 3.1 per cent.
In the School District 73 election for five city seats, Cole Hickson topped the polls with 12.5 per cent, Heather Grieve was next with 10.1. Then came John O’Fee with 9.6 per cent, Troylana Manson with 9.6 per cent and Kathleen Karpuk with 7.6 per cent.
The Thompson-Nicola Regional District had elections in only two of its electoral areas. Former director Sally Watson lost a comeback bid to Jim Smith in Area E (Bonaparte Plateau), 84 votes to 155, and another former director, Steve Rice, lost out to incumbent Tricia Thorpe in Area I (Blue Sky Country), 126 votes to 249.
A referendum for a Tobiano fire hall passed handily, 321 to 24.
While the race for Kamloops mayor was over as soon as the evening started, things were much tighter for the eight council seats. At one point, it looked as though only two would make it back in but in the end there were three.
Sunderman, the lone member of Pivot Kamloops to win election, was in and out of the eighth and last available seat but eventually eked out a 71-vote win over Bepple. Under Election BC rules, a candidate may ask for a recount if the difference is 100 votes or fewer, but that can’t happen until the official results are declared at 4 p.m. on Oct. 21.
Voter turnout was widely expected to be higher than the 30.42 per cent in 2022, and it was, with 30,260 ballots cast for a turnout of 35.49 per cent.
— Mel Rothenburger.
Thank goodness there is a democratic process to get rid of politicians such as Sarai, Bass, Bepple and Karpuk. Serious consideration should be given to adopt recall legislation for people elected to office at the municipal level.
The honeymoon might be a short one for the new Mayor. I suspect it won’t be long until the RCMP brass will be pressing hard for an answer about their headquarters building. O’Reilly led the way in pushing for the PAC and multiplex projects before addressing the needs of the RCMP. If he indeed is the CEO of a development firm and if his conjugal partner works in development at the City and if some of his larger financial supporters were in the development-type field, will he or should he recuse himself from numerous discussions about development?
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It’s a decent result for the No Incumbents crowd. Kamloops won’t have to suffer through another four years of Bepple and her constant point of orders, and this is a positive personal outcome for her as she can now travel to the Gaza Strip and put into action her political priorities for the city of Kamloops. It’s also great for this city and I am not at all sorry to see her go.
Bill Sarai was soundly rejected and sent packing. The nerve of that guy to stand in front of voters after what he did was really something. Good riddance. A tear won’t be shed for either Karpuk or Bass and that’s for the best. Thank you for your service but please leave the building immediately.
We have at least one new councillor who in the previous election, expressed fervent and dogmatic support for decriminalization and wet facilities. Let’s see if he’s realized what the rest of us knew from day one.
The media will certainly have to work much harder to win awards with Reid gone, and they may end up missing him. Reid met a predictable fate, but now that he’s free of the constraints of council, he might make more noise than ever.
I hope the new councillors have the ability to think critically, and on paper, it looks like consensus building will be a required skill, as the days of guaranteed 8 v 1 vote counts are over. I hope it’s not so easy to shut out the public from this day forward.
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Potentially the best council we ever had. Let’s see how campaign promises turn out this time around.
But once again a low voters turnout…that is a very bad thing.
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