r/mississauga • u/ShubhaBala • 28m ago
A really different mayor to appeal to the 80%?
For context - I grew up in Mississauga, have been gone a few decades, just moved back here from NYC.
I'm astonished at how ridiculously low the voter turnout is in Mississauga. And it had me thinking about how Mamdani won, in part, not by getting all the voters to switch to vote for him, but by connecting with the disenfranchised working class.
Well really it was the community groups that were composed of those folks who created the conditions for Mamdani, who selected Mamdani, and then worked with their community to vote for Mamdani - ensuring that he represented *them*.
But the point is, it was the brown aunties and uncles, the taxi drivers, and so many more people who didn't vote because they saw a bunch of middle of the road folks who once elected, didn't care about them at all. Mamdani was like "No I will be YOUR mayor.. so take a chance and vote".
And it is pretty amazing how *in it* he is. I had never seen any previous NYC mayor (it's a big city), and I saw Mamdani speak once at our local park, my friend saw him at a little rally she was at where he spoke, etc. He's a person who's out there "where the people are", to quote the Little Mermaid.
Mississauga has a few mayoral candidates that, from my point of view, are all more or less the same. Yes some are a tiny bit more conservative or a tiny bit more progressive, but if I were to draw them on a graph they'd all be around the center. And they're all doing the same ol' same ol' to make their platform and market and connect with community.
It feels like given the 80% who don't vote here, a candidate who is *completely different* and shakes things up and tries to get the *other* 80% would really succeed here. Heck, they'd only need to get like.. 20% of that 80% to believe that maybe they won't be yet another status quo, and they'd win.