Al Bridal defeats Denis Perrault to become Swift Current’s next mayor

Al Bridal will be Swift Current’s new mayor, as he defeated incumbent mayor Denis Perrault in voting Thursday night.

The local construction business owner received 2,497 votes. Perrault, who was seeking his second term as mayor, received 1,900 votes in Swift Current’s municipal election.

“The pit in the bottom of my stomach is finally sort of relieved,” Bridal said moments after finding out he’d been elected.

“The very next thought that went through (my mind) was how fortunate I am to have so many citizens of Swift Current believe in me and believe in what I’ve been saying, and how humble I feel for this honour for these people to vote for me and think that we can make a change and make something different and even better for our great city.”

It will certainly be memorable for Bridal, as earlier Thursday he helped celebrate the sixth birthday of one of his grandkids before receiving 56.8 percent of the vote from the city’s residents.

“It feels good, I’m human and we always like to win,” he said. “I was telling my wife even if I lost tonight, the one thing I can say is I ran a very clean campaign, didn’t take shots at anybody, just laid facts out there for people to see …

“I’ve always said politics doesn’t need to be dirty, it just needs to be honest. I’m proud of all the people that supported me, all the help I got, and proud of running a nice clean campaign.”

Only two incumbent councillors, Ryan Plewis and Pat Friesen, will be returning to the council table, something that didn’t catch the former two-term Swift Current city councillor (1997-2003) off guard.

“Only two of five (incumbents councillors were re-elected), so obviously there was some appetite for change even in the councillor end of things,” Bridal said.

And now that Bridal knows his fate with the city, his first project is to take a good look at its financials.

“I know this is going to sound boring but the first target I want to do is sit down and work that budget through,” he said. “I know it’s going to be long and a task but that is my first thing, because the budget sets the tone for the year and I want to sit down with my newly elected council and work on that budget.”

The 63-year-old will be sworn in as Swift Current mayor on Nov. 23 at the Innovation Credit Union iPlex.