WARMINGTON: Race for Mississauga mayor could go down to wire

· Toronto Sun

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You just know that the late, great, legendary and iconic Mayor Hazel McCallion is looking down from above with a huge smile.

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Mississauga has always had a strong mayor who dominates the political landscape inside and outside the city, as McCallion did for many decades. The message in this mayor’s race is clear: That won’t change no matter which of the current candidates — Mayor Carolyn Parrish, former mayor Bonnie Crombie and wannabe mayor, Councillor Alvin Tedjo, succeeds at the ballot box Oct. 26.

Just like that, the race for mayor of Mississauga is a neck-and-neck horse race with three qualified frontrunners who have a shot at crossing the finish line as the winner — and a very capable fourth candidate, Councillor Dipika Damerla, poised to come up the middle if the three out front crash into each other down the stretch.

Anything can happen here. Dogfight is the word to describe it. Nasty. Mean. Fascinating. And more to come in the next 21 days.

When it comes to who is leading the way with three weeks to go, it depends on what poll of 500 or 1,000 people you choose to believe. One has the current mayor in the lead while the other has the former mayor out front. Both show a third contender coming up the rail.

Polls show Mississauga mayor’s race a dead heat

Monday’s Liaison Strategies poll shows “Bonnie Crombie at 30%, Mayor Carolyn Parrish at 29%, and Alvin Tedjo at 26%. Dipika Damerla has 11%. A weekend poll from Pallas Data shows “Carolyn Parrish has a nine-point lead” with “34%, followed by former mayor Bonnie Crombie at 25%, and Alvin Tedjo at 21%, with Dipika Damerla at 14%.”

It’s fantastic.

Of course, there are aways issues with each candidate that people don’t like. With Parrish, there has been criticism of her handling of relations with Peel Regional Police — hence the association which represents the members endorsing Tedjo. In the end, Parrish came around and gave the cops their due and learned some valuable lessons that it is different being mayor than counclllor.

With Crombie, there is the question of her using Mississauga as her fallback position since her efforts to lead the provincial Liberals didn’t work out, which has some saying she abandoned the city. For many, this doesn’t fly since she was trying to move a political rung and ran in the city provincially — albeit unsuccessfully.

Tedjo has been an exceptional councillor who is talking about freezing taxes, which has his critics saying, ‘how do you keep services in place if you do that?’ But there are always places to cut and when it comes to keeping seniors in their homes and helping everyday families with their kids in hockey, figure skating or soccer, every penny counts.

‘Blonde bombshell’

Ultimately, the voters will decide who they want.

After last week’s debate, in which the gloves were dropped between Parrish and Crombie, some media lamented this is not how things should go in an election campaign. You had Parrish saying the staff was fearing the “blonde bombshell” was coming back and Crombie saying Parrish should get out from behind her desk. Tedjo, in the meantime, just has to stand there to make the point that maybe it’s time for a fresh approach and to go with someone who isn’t mayor and chart a new direction.

But voters want heat and passion and emotion to be part of a political campaign because the taxpayers deserve to get the best person to win.

The thing about powerful mayors is they are often characters, and Parrish and Crombie fit that bill well. They are nice people one-on-one, but fierce when the chips are down, and they seem to despise each other. Tedjo, meanwhile, is an effective ward guy, has a young family partaking in sports and has a lot in common with the struggling working family of 2026 and understands that world. Dipika has always been a common-sense representative.

The thing about Mississauga is for decades it has been a Canadian economic juggernaut. While the GO train and highways are jammed at rush hour, it’s not a suburb of Toronto in a traditional sense. All you have to do is look at its growing downtown skyline, spend time in Port Credit or any of the waterfront parks to know this place is world class with people living in it from backgrounds all over the world.

Hurricane Hazel would approve

Short of sports and concerts, many now rarely go into Toronto regularly since Mississauga has its own scene. But it is at a turning point. With the tariff war with the United States changing the game, and technology changing, what is the future for Mississauga? It doesn’t have the room to grow out as it did during McCallion’s time, but it seems to have plenty of capacity to grow upwards.

The most important thing for many families feeling the cost of so much government and regulations at every level: Is Mississauga a city people can afford to live in? The voters have to decide if they want to look to the past for steady leadership, the present or the future. All of that is on the ballot and it promises to be a brawl to the end to determine who gets the chains.

Hurricane Hazel would love this.

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