Kamloops mayor spent $33,600 on his campaign, according to Elections BC

Photo: Castanet

Kamloops Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson spent about $33,600 on his successful election campaign, according to financial statements published by Elections BC.

Kamloops Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson spent about $33,600 on his successful election campaign — the second highest expenditure totalled among the five mayoral candidates, according to Elections BC.

Elections BC has published financial disclosure statements from the 2022 local general election.

The list of expenditures shows Dieter Dudy, former city councillor and mayoral runner-up, spent the most out of any election candidate, totalling $48,754 in expenses for his campaign.

As for the rest of the mayoral candidates, Elections BC reports that Sadie Hunter spent $29,437, Arjun Singh $21,307 and Ray Dhaliwal $14,760 on their unsuccessful campaigns.

Darpan Sharma topped the list of Kamloops councillor candidates, totalling $35,942 in expenses. Sharma was not elected to council.

Of the 10 councillor candidates who spent more than $10,000 on their campaigns, six of them were elected.

The highest-spending elected councillors were Bill Sarai with $33,072 in expenses, Katie Neustaeter, who spent a total of $30,160, Margot Middleton with $28,278 in expenses, and Mike O’Reilly, at $19,449.

Nancy Bepple spent $15,141, while Kelly Hall spent $12,852.

Randy Sunderman, who received the ninth highest number of votes, thereby just missing a council seat, spent $17,074 on his campaign, according to Elections BC.

Dennis Giesbrecht and Caroline King, who were also close runners-up, spent $12,240 and $11,968 respectively.

Stephen Karpuk, who was elected to council, reported spending $3,491 on his campaign.

Elections BC data shows Dale Bass, who was re-elected as a city councillor last fall, received $7,595 in campaign contributions and had $0 in expenses, but was left with $0 in surplus campaign funds. Bass told Castanet Kamloops her financial report is incomplete and said she will be in touch with Elections BC to resolve the matter.

Financial statements for all Kamloops candidates who ran in the 2022 election can be found here.