Melissa Granum was elected mayor of Delta on October 17, 2026. The City of Delta's official count gives her 16,197 votes, Dylan Kruger 9,460 and George Harvie 7,782, and the Chief Election Officer declared the result on October 21, 2026. The North Delta Reporter reported that this was 48.44 per cent of the ballots cast, that Harvie had been mayor for eight years, and that her three Delta First running mates, Tammy Hansen, Alexander Fischer and Jat Puri, were all elected to Council. The Delta Optimist reported that Global News called her win at 10:03 pm on election night. On election night she told the Optimist that the most important commitment her team made was to bring residents back into the conversation at City Hall, and that a review of the Official Community Plan would start as soon as possible.
The Reporter reported on March 11, 2026 that Delta First was a new organization led by Granum, with three council candidates, and that it launched with endorsements from former attorney general Wally Oppal and retired Delta police chief Jim Cessford. On August 20, 2026 the Reporter reported that former mayors Lois Jackson and Beth Johnson, former Delta South MLA Vicki Huntington and retired firefighter John Burr had also endorsed her. The Reporter's election night report called her a first-time candidate, and the campaign's August release, by the Reporter's account, said she had not held elected office before.
In August 2020 the Reporter wrote that she was the executive director of the Surrey Police Board, the civilian body set up to oversee the new Surrey Police Service, and that she had been the Delta Police Department's corporate planning manager for 12 years, a role that included the administration of the Delta Police Board. A Surrey Police Board release of December 10, 2021 names her as its executive director. The Reporter's March 2026 report, drawing on the campaign's release, gives her Delta Police years as 2008 to 2020 and her Surrey Police Board years as 2020 to 2025. By her own account, in the questionnaire she answered for the Reporter and on the Delta First site, she is now director of board governance at the BC Lottery Corporation, holds an MBA, and has lived in Delta for 28 years. The Reporter wrote in 2020 that she had been a director of the Delta Chamber of Commerce and the Delta Hospice Society and a member of the Rotary Club of Ladner. voche.me has not checked the BC Lottery Corporation role or the volunteer roles with those bodies.
Her campaign made three statements of its own beside the Delta First platform, each reported by the Reporter. On September 2, 2026 she called on the federal government and the RCMP to give the City assurances of police resources for the expanding Roberts Bank port. On September 11 she published an open letter to Delta's business community, promising roundtables with business owners in her first 90 days and an Economic Development Advisory Committee to guide a five-year plan. On September 22 she said she would challenge the Province's Bill 44 housing rules and press for more local say, while using the powers over height, setbacks, parking, trees and design the City already has.
In the Reporter's questionnaire she named three priorities: an Official Community Plan that works for the neighbourhoods, making sure Delta benefits financially from national projects, and bringing residents' voices back to City Hall. She wrote that the current Council had two years to make a new plan and instead approved it in a few months, which is her own account of that decision. In the statement she gave the Optimist on October 1, 2026 she promised a review of City spending and clearer public reporting, and said she would work with senior governments so that Delta gets local benefits from port expansion and is protected from costs that belong elsewhere.
