Former Kelowna Chamber of Commerce president Tom Dyas in an image from his campaign announcement.

(CONTRIBUTED / iNFOnews.ca)

Kelowna’s new mayor says "time" spent campaigning and getting to know the city's issues was the biggest change between his two mayoral campaigns, one of which led to his victory last night.

Tom Dyas crushed incumbent mayor Colin Basran during the municipal election last night, Oct. 15, with 21,110 votes to Basran’s 10,821, a drastic shift from when the contenders went head to head for the mayor spot in 2018.

“People are looking forward to being heard... so overall it’s really good and I feel great that it’s taken place and happy we were successful last night and I think the residents of this town made a statement with regards to the certainty of the way the election turned out,” Dyas said.

This will be Dyas' first time in political office, having never served as councillor.

In 2018, Dyas collected just under 30% of the vote in losing to Basran. That was Dyas's first time running for office. His victory brings to an end Basran's 11 years on city council. He was first elected as a councillor in 2011 then as mayor in 2014. Basran did not return requests for comment.

The biggest difference compared with this campaign versus his in 2018 was time, Dyas said. In 2018, he co-chaired the Memorial Cup bid right before jumping into the municipal race.

“It probably took four or five months of my time and right after that, I jumped into the process of running for mayor and so I had not had the time to get as comfortable on my feet with the issues,” he said.

This time around, he spent more time talking to residents, which gave him a greater level of comfort speaking to the local issues. 

“I just believe there was potentially not a fulfillment to the desire of the residents of the community that should have been completed in their eyes,” he said, about the previous mayor. There’s been a substantial increase in homeless and being number one on a national level with crime, that concerned residents.

Statistics Canada, the source of Dyas’ ‘crime capital’ statement, showed earlier this year Kelowna led the country in crime statistics but that number isn’t for Kelowna alone. StatsCan uses a broader definition called Census Metropolitan Area that, for Kelowna, includes the entire Central Okanagan.

READ MORE: Which Kelowna mayoralty candidate is telling you the truth about crime and taxes?

The mayoral race in 2018 also meant people became more aware of who he was, he said.

“I had maybe assumed because of my background being involved in many aspects of the community with chairing the Memorial Cup, being involved with the Chamber of Commerce for 10 years, sitting on many, many different communities, I knew enough people in the community but I understood this time that you need to know more and that’s why we started walking doorstep to doorstep way back in the middle of June,” he said.

The 2018 election also helped him understand the election race process and described it as “basically setting up a business,” he said.

The first thing Dyas will do as mayor is speak with councillors to learn what’s important to them, he said.

He joins former CHBC news anchor Rick Webber, UBCO engineering professor Gord Lovegrove, MP Ron Cannan, who returns to the council table where he started his political career and incumbents Loyal Wooldridge, Mohini Singh, Luke Stack, Charlie Hodge and Maxine DeHart.

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