Jay Lundgren was elected mayor of the Township of Langley on October 17, 2026. The Township's official results give him 18,302 votes and Mayor Eric Woodward, of Progress for Langley, 15,459, and the Chief Election Officer declared the result on October 21, 2026. The Langley Advance Times reported that 34,029 people voted, a turnout of 31.55 per cent, and that his Langley Strong team won six of the eight council seats and all five Township seats on the Langley Board of Education, with Shumail Javed its one council candidate not elected. In his speech that night, the paper reported, he said he had first planned to run for a council seat before he was persuaded to run for mayor, and he credited Woodward with eight years of public service. Daily Hive's report of October 18 gives him 18,202 votes; the Township's own page gives 18,302. The new Council's inaugural meeting is on November 2, 2026.
The Advance Times reported on May 5, 2026 that Langley Strong, an elector organization registered with Elections BC and headed by Barbara Sharp, had named Lundgren its candidate for mayor, with the four councillors outside Woodward's majority, Margaret Kunst, Barb Martens, Kim Richter and Blair Whitmarsh, joining the team. The paper described him as a businessman and a volunteer coach in youth basketball, ball hockey and baseball, and said the vote would be the first in the Township since 1999 in which two opposing slates ran against each other. CTV News called him a political newcomer in its report of October 9. The Township's 2026 results page lists no earlier candidacy for him, and voche.me found none.
By his own account on the Langley Strong site and on VoteMate, he grew up in Langley, holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from Trinity Western University, studied journalism and sports broadcasting at BCIT and worked at CityTV and CTV, is vice-president of business development and partnerships at Agency Media and a partner in Ava.ai and Coastal Drone, was vice-president of marketing and philanthropy at Habitat for Humanity, has coached more than 600 young athletes with Elevate Basketball Club, Langley Girls Academy, Valley Ball Hockey, Langley Baseball and high school teams, and has emceed charity events and more than 500 weddings. In the Advance Times' candidate profile he wrote that he has lived in Langley for 38 years and lives in Murrayville. voche.me has not checked any of these roles with the companies or organizations named.
The campaign turned on the Township's debt and taxes. The Advance Times reported that the Township's 2026 budget put long-term capital debt at $421.7 million, up from $175.1 million in 2022, and that its five-year plan projected a 22.8 per cent property tax increase for 2027, a projection Woodward called made up. At the Fort Langley Community Association's all-candidates meeting on September 21, Lundgren said his first priority would be a forensic audit and a review of the debt, and that big sports facilities had gone first while the community centre, pool and library promised to Willoughby were undone. In the Advance Times' interview of October 2 he said the growth pays for growth plan was not working, that the Township needed more businesses to widen its tax base, and that he would go ahead with the Willoughby community centre with a funding plan. He told CTV News on October 9 that the debt had climbed to about $600 million in four years, while Woodward put his term's borrowing at more than $400 million; CTV reported that both named a Willoughby community centre as their top project. The Langley Strong platform's figure for the debt, counting borrowing in progress and approved and the housing society's $177 million, is $797.6 million; CBC reported in April 2026 that the Township had authorized $602 million.
On policing, he told CTV that Langley had one officer for 800 residents against the RCMP's recommended one for 650, and that the Township had to reach that ratio before SkyTrain arrives; those ratios are his own figures. For Aldergrove he told CTV it needed another sheet of ice and a gymnasium open to the public. At the Aldergrove all-candidates meeting on October 5, Progress for Langley's Michael Pratt said the Langley Strong platform wanted to develop the 900-acre naval radio station lands north of Aldergrove; Lundgren answered that the team wanted to know the federal government's intentions for the land and had not proposed taking it out of the Agricultural Land Reserve or developing it. On the Langley Strong site he wrote that he would run Council meetings where the public can ask questions before decisions are made, that every capital decision would come with its building cost and its yearly operating cost, and that a resident who writes to the mayor's office would get an answer from a person and a timeline.
Before the campaign period, Langley Strong issued two statements in his name about the sitting Council. On June 11, 2026 he called proposed changes to the Council Procedure Bylaw, which would lower the vote needed to censure a councillor and end the equal rotation of acting mayor, fundamental changes to the balance of power on Council, and asked Council to defer them until after the election. On June 27 the Advance Times reported that the Township had Langley Strong's posters about the debt removed from transit shelters as election signs outside the allowed period; Lundgren called it a move by Woodward to silence critics, and Woodward called the posters illegal. A Township statement reported on July 2 said the removal was a staff decision. The petition that ten residents filed in July 2026 to disqualify Woodward and two councillors over the Township's payment of legal bills is on the Langley Strong record; the Advance Times' reports of it do not quote Lundgren, and none of its claims had been tested in court when the paper reported on it.
