赢得选举需要什么：安大略省市政选举的变革与挑战

Now, the interesting thing is he wasn't the only candidate to pull off an upset. According to the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, almost half of heads of council who ran for re-election lost. That's 46%, up from 37 in 2022.

So what was behind all these upsets? Were voters looking for change or was something else going on? I talked to Alvin Tedjo about what it takes to unseat an incumbent.

Then there's the other side of election night. What happens when you put everything into a campaign and lose? We hear from two candidates about what comes after defeat.

I'm Jeyan Jeganathan. Welcome to The Rundown.

Let's take a closer look at how Alvin Tedjo pulled off his win back in August. Polling showed Mayor Carolyn Parrish and former Mayor Bonnie Crombie tied at 35% and Tedjo a distant third with 12%. But over the next two months, he steadily gained ground. So how did he turn that momentum into victory?

First off, congratulations on the win. Mayor-elect Alvin Tedjo. How are you doing?

But, you know, I felt probably right around advance polls, which were almost three weeks before Election Day, that we were we were picking up steam and that we had a real good shot at winning. And I think every week we felt even stronger to the point where I said, if we do lose this, I don't know anything about politics because I don't know what else we could have been doing.

And it had been feeling so good, you know, at the doors. And so we even saw, I would say, a mismatch with with the polls that had us competitive, you know, tight three-way race kind of turning into two near the end. But it had been, you know, more, more support on the ground. And what we were hearing at the doors than we were seeing in the polls. But, you know, that's that's what we saw.

This is a graph showing the final election results. Parish at about 27%. Bonnie at about 22%. And there you are on top with just under 40% of the votes. Carolyn Parish, of course, was mayor for a term before her, and Bonnie Crombie, who served for ten years. Two big names, but both lost in the end here.

How much does name recognition matter in municipal politics anymore? Does it.

I mean, that that's that's what you saw reflected in the polling you saw. You know, people vote for who they knew and who they could identify. But I think that's the difference between polls and Election Day is that turnout is important. Making sure people go out and vote.

And while we did increase voter turnout from roughly 21% to essentially 34, 35%, which is a huge increase, there are still a lot of people that don't vote, right? It's still nearly two thirds of people who don't vote. So you have people who are kind of responding to polls who, you know, maybe aren't actually voting, and they're picking more familiar names.

And then sometimes polls help drive turnout in a good or bad way, and then people will vote for somebody they think that can win versus somebody that potentially could win. I think having us close near the end, just I think the last poll had us 1% behind Bonnie Crombie certainly helped our chances and getting more turnout.

But nobody predicted, you know, a 22,000 margin of victory on our part, 12 points against against the current mayor. And I think that's, you know, surprising a lot of people, and especially people around Ontario who who would expect that incumbents like these two who have not just name recognition. I mean, they've been in elected politics, you know, over a combined 60 years. You know, that much history and that much familiarity with people. And I think that's why our story has gotten so much attention.

And when I ran for mayor, we we did a more neutral teal Tedjo teal is my team likes to call it, but you know, we we learn a lot of things. We learn a lot about how what messages resonate with people, how are we better able to connect with people?

And you know, there, there are certain values that you and, and priorities that you want to talk about in a, in a provincial race versus a municipal race. Some of them are related, but we wanted to make sure that we were really focusing on what people were really concerned about in this particular election. And that was the cost of living, affordability, taxes. Those are all kind of one bucket.

And then on the other side, there was a lot of concerns in and around safety and and how the city is handling that. Right.

And so through that entire narrative was also this change conversation that we were having in the city. But as you can see with the results from around Ontario, many other cities. And, you know, the province are having the same conversation.

You bringing an ice cream truck to a high school where, you know, high school students can't vote. You're bringing Freezies.

One of the campaign pushes was about freezing property taxes. That was at a local mosque.

What was the decision behind some of those strategies and tactics?

And how do you break through that in a city like Mississauga, which, you know, respectfully doesn't have its own media and has a tough time getting coverage when it comes to local politics? So we were trying to come up with creative and innovative ways to engage with people face to face. And so we had a number of events every week. We would have multiple events where I'd be going to a coffee shop, I'd be going to a pub, and we invited anyone who wanted to come and meet me, ask me any questions that they could.

And then when we saw that, you know, school was starting, I have three kids in school, two of them in high school. You know, they there's always kind of this down. We're like, oh, well, we're starting school again. How do we, you know, make this exciting? I was like, well, everybody loves ice cream. Why don't we see if we can get, you know, some attention by having a contest?

And so I put out a video, I think it had over 100,000 views and 10,000 comments, which is, you know, in terms of engagement in the city of Mississauga is incredible. And we asked them to sort of vote for, you know, which school should get this free ice cream truck. And it blew it blew up. It was way more successful than we thought it could be. We ended up sending three trucks to two different schools and saying, hey, yes, here's free ice cream.

But also engage with, you know, municipal politics. If you are looking for volunteer hours, you have issues that you want to talk to us about. You want transit to be delivered in a better way. Tell us about it.

And I stood there, I took pictures, I talked to people, and then I had parents saying they talked to their kids about it and that they had never, you know, either met the mayor or mayoral candidate and they'd never been engaged in municipal politics before. But now that they now they were. And we we also heard that because of that, more schools wanted to do student vote. More where, you know, great tens and great fives engage in this. And they look up people's platforms. And that got more people talking.

And I think that was a pretty exciting thing when we did the freezy bit, the freezy bit was, you know, we want to freeze taxes, enjoy this frozen treat kind of a thing, as well as just kind of being a little tongue in cheek with that.

You know, the federal government has, you know, sounded the alarm. We are in a trade war with our largest trading partner, and everyone is anxious about how that's going to affect their jobs, how that's going to affect their livelihood.

The provincial government has done a lot recently to where, you know, people are looking for stability. And that was kind of the argument that both those orders of government talked about during their elections last year.

I think with the way people are seeing it play out, they, again, were uneasy. But in this particular moment, they could do they could elect change at the municipal level without it sort of affecting everything else that was going on. And they wanted to see more improvements. Right. But they, they, they didn't want to throw out the federal or provincial government, but they're more willing to throw out potentially municipal governments.

And it's it's a it's a fascinating thing because, you know, as a student of politics, myself, I would tell you that this is very irregular, right? This is not a normal trend. Incumbents almost universally have a huge competitive advantage in any sort of municipal race, especially in Ontario, where we don't have political parties or affiliations, where people are sort of saying, okay, we're done with this particular party, and we need to go on to this one.

So, you know, I think the the moment and the anxiety helped push the desire for change and people's perception of the need for change. And it gave us a lane. It gave these new candidates, these new heads of council, an opportunity to say, well, let me deliver that change.

What was that conversation like? Like, you know, we talk about freezing property taxes for two years. This is, you know, a lot of people had a lot of questions about that. Will you be relying on the province for money? What was that conversation like with the Premier? Was he cordial with you?

Well, you know, I've I've certainly been critical of the Premier in the past, and he understands that he's, you know, a political animal himself. And he knows a good victory when he sees one.

He called me the day after the election. He congratulated me, but he also was wanting to express how impressive he thought the win was, considering who the the the two other candidates were. And he's like, you. Absolutely. You know, I'm not going to say exactly what he said, but you absolutely, you know, knocked it out of the park. He was a little more colourful than that. When when he was talking about us beating those two essentially incumbents.

But he also told me that he really does appreciate the platform that we put forward, you know, lower taxes and smaller government, more efficiency. You know, he says he can get on board with those things. He understands that, you know, Mississauga has a lot of potential as well and that, you know, we want to have a good working relationship with the province moving forward, and that we're going to sit down very soon after swearing in. I know we were going to have those conversations.

And then I saw him at a at a grocery store opening here in the city of Mississauga, the largest one in Ontario. He was really excited about that, too.

So he, he, he was certainly more interested in talking about, you know, how we were able to, to, to beat the two incumbents, so to speak.

How do they process that? And would they do it again?

Zainab Azim. Krissan Veerasingam, great to have you on "The Rundown". How are you guys doing?

Now you both entered races against better known political figures. Name recognition can be a difficult thing to get over. Some would say that it would deter candidates from even running at all.

So help me understand. I'm coming to you first. What was one of the reasons you decided to jump into the mayoral race in Milton?

And I had seen it a place of so much possibility and amazing people. It's a family town. My family is there too. We have one of the most educated populations of people and the trades, the arts, sciences, whatever you want to call it. We have the people for that. We have land left to decide how we develop. A lot of other places don't have that. We have highway access from everywhere.

But people like me, I've been commuting since the age of 11 years old to Toronto every day of my life.

So you see a place where the fastest growing community on the continent for 11 years, and we've've only grown in houses and warehouses, not in the jobs, the services, the opportunities, the infrastructure that people need to live a full and fulfilling life there.

And that's not the mayor's fault alone. But I worked in government before. And when you've been there for a while, you become complacent.

And so as someone who calls Milton home with my family, I saw the potential that was there. And I didn't think that we were quite meeting it yet and that we needed a fresh vision for our home.

And that was part of stepping up is how do we make the world a better place. You start at home, not in the Ottawa's or the Queen's parks of the world, but in your home.

And you had a tough battle there with an incumbent with name recognition. Who had been in that position. You were running in Scarborough Centre, Ward 21. What was what made you decide to jump in there?

And I didn't see the sort of leadership I wanted in 2023. There were massive cuts to services in the city with, I believe at the time it was Mayor John Tory's last budget, and we fought that budget at TTC riders, which is the advocacy Organization. I was co-chair of.

And unfortunately, despite the fact that a lot of those cuts were focused on our ward, our councillor at the time voted for that budget.

And I thought, we can't have a councillor and this is unfortunately the truth. A lot of councillors just follow what the mayor does. I want to challenge the mayor where it's necessary to get results for my community, but also work with anyone in leadership to also get those same results for my community.

At 24, you were up against incumbent Mayor Gordon Krantz, who has held that job since the 19. Since 1980.

What is help me understand sort of the campaigning methods here. When you've got experience, when someone you know touts the experience in office and you're coming in at 24, how do you split that difference there? How do you tell people that experience, perhaps an age doesn't necessarily play here?

One, you have to show people who you are for them to believe it. It's not about telling people like, you know, I have this experience. It's show them what you can do. And we did that in Milton.

But two, it's I don't think it's how long you've been alive. It's what you've done in those years. And I'm very grateful that, you know, I've gotten to spend time working in the federal government at the Minister of Finance Office. That's where I realized the power of local government. And we focus on the national and international level so much. But really the things that affect our lives most are at the local level. So I got that experience. I worked on the Mamdani campaign. I teach policy and economics at Harvard as a teaching fellow. All those experiences.

But the most important experience I always said on the campaign was being a Miltonian.

But at the same time, in a working class ward like Scarborough Centre, name recognition means so much. A lot of people, a lot of families, when they go to the polls. Unfortunately, they're only thinking about the mayor, councillor and trustee are afterthoughts. And who's going to fill that space. It's whoever's been there the longest with, you know, the memorable name.

And you can fight through that by knocking on a ton of doors, which we did. But in six months, there's it's almost virtually impossible to knock on every door in the ward, especially after the ward size ballooned, right. In 2018.

So my challenge is, you know, the next four years, however long it takes to just make sure I meet as much people as possible and see if I can get to that magical number.

Let's talk social media because you had a video that perhaps blew up. You did a video with Gordon Krantz. I think it got picked up on Jimmy Kimmel on the late night circuit.

What was the campaign strategy to collaborate with an opponent?

For the folks who live there, they know this election was deeply divisive. There were ten candidates running different groups of people, and signs were being torn down of people, of certain ethnic groups and not others. Things were we have a I shouldn't say this, but there is a group that's called Milton Batok that's just focused on bad talk.

Oh, wow.

So there has been this because we've been the fastest growing community. I believe without the public spaces to facilitate community cohesion, there has been a lot of division and there were things happening that I don't think represents who we are as Milton Keynes.

And so I went to Gord's house because everybody knows where he lives. And I said, Gord, it was actually based off of give credit where it's due. It was based off of a video from America and Utah. So surprisingly, American politics are even more divisive. But in Utah.

And so I showed him this video and I said, Gord, you know, we know that this is happening. But as people who are running, we are supposed to model leadership for folks. And again, I've known him since I was a kid. So he's Grandpa Gord to me. And I said, why don't we show people who we actually are as a town? And instead of responding because a lot of people were reacting fearfully and trying to create anger, that is a very pacifying emotion. Why don't we actually show hope instead?

And so it was. I give him credit. He agreed to that. And the milkshake thing was easy because we have a he likes to keep a lean figure. I don't I don't care. So I said, you know what? We're doing the milkshakes. Okay, so it was an easy. Yeah, it was, it was we were trying to meet the moment.

It's the first door knock. It's an introduction, maybe a bit of name recognition, but what's so important is moving digital to the doors. So what it did is it activated some people to go door knock with us.

And so when we would go door knocking and someone would, oh yeah, I know her from the milkshake video. It's like a softening up because familiarity is really important when someone feels unfamiliar. And then it would lead into a conversation because they already have a good feeling about you, right? But you need to build that relationship at the doors in person. Nothing beats in-person organizing.

So if you have the digital, great, but you need the in-person infrastructure to convert it into votes.

Did you find some movement there? Where on social to where it turned out?

Essentially people at the door when they feel like they've seen you before, it's a much easier conversation, right? If you're seeing someone for the first time, like getting through that ask of, hey, have you decided who you're voting for is a lot more difficult?

And even signs I found like when when we started putting down signs, a lot of people are like, oh, I saw your sign outside and they take me more seriously. And even a volunteer said once, like, you know, not everyone's friendly at the door. Once someone told me, get out of my lawn. Right?

But then a volunteer followed up later and they apologized to the volunteer because they assumed I was a salesman and because they saw my sign, they're like, oh, I just yelled at a candidate.

Any stories like that on the front lines of doing door knocking that kind of sticks with.

I mean, you know, we did kind of deep canvassing because another thing about Milton is that we have very low voter turnout and participation. Municipal is usually lower everywhere. I think we had one of the worst ones last election.

So our goal was really, how do we reach the 71% of people who don't participate? And we have so many stories from our canvassers and myself where we, you know, people who one lady was taking out her trash. She's never voted before locally. And one of her volunteers went up to her and just started asking her, well, what do you think about Milton? How long have you lived here? You know, what do you love most about it? What would you do to make it better? And then he brought in the campaign, and it was a 20 minute conversation. Not too long, not too short.

And she shared that she was just so proud to see this young person, because there's young people have a bad rep of not caring about things. No, but they really, really do care. And she voted for the first time in this election because she saw someone else care so deeply. And also listen to what she cares about.

And I'm curious, are you going to be keeping those councillors and mayors? You know, accountable to it? Is there one particular concern that you have?

You know, I'll still be working with TTC riders. I still run my non-profit Scarborough Environmental Association. So whether it's housing, health care, education, I'm going to be fighting for Scarborough residents because unfortunately, a lot of Scarborough residents feel this. And I feel it's true. We get the short end of the stick sometimes, and that's true for a lot of working class communities. When, you know, voter turnout is lower, when folks don't have as much time to talk to politicians, then they get taken for granted.

And, you know, regardless of what issue we're focusing on, my work is going to be organizing Scarborough to have a bigger voice.

For me, the true measure is going to be in the years to come. We've collected so much data, we've, you know, got in touch with so many community leaders, how we're able to convert that energy to creating a more connected Scarborough. That's going to tell me whether my campaign was a success or not.

We can say we've been the number one contender in the past 20 years, but that's that's just a number that doesn't mean anything to everyday people. And to me, it feels good, but it doesn't mean much, to be honest.

For us, winning meant winning every day. When we started this campaign, you know, it's very uncertain what the outcome is going to be. You don't know if you're going to win or lose the election. So it matters what you're building.

And I think what's very rare in campaigns heard it was the struggle in the Toronto one. Two is we were the only campaign with 300 volunteers knocking almost every single door in the town. And just yesterday, great timing for this interview. We had all those volunteers fill our home because we were talking about what are we building next?

And so I can't tell you if I'm going to run for anything in the future, but what we are going to do is we've created this organizing collective, the things that we promised, careers close to home, transit every 20 minutes and things to do in the community. Those are things we can still win even if we're not in office.

And so now we have this energized, activated group of people that have found agency and their power to change the world, and they've come together and they're going to have their own campaigns, and we're going to coach and train them, and they're going to win these things over the next four years. That's what I can promise.

And one of them might run one day, and we're going to be there as an organized collective, not from scratch, like we had to do this campaign to make change happen.

But also I want to keep this space open to elevate other leaders. I don't want it to just be this election begins or ends with me. I think there's wonderful people in Scarborough that could make a better candidate than me, and we want to I want to create an electoral system that gives them the opportunity.

When I was a night shift worker at Canada Post, there was no way I would have run for office. And there's wonderful, amazing people who work night shift, who work these difficult jobs, who should have a voice on city council. The system isn't designed to get them elected. Unfortunately. I want to change that.