{"id":954412,"date":"2026-11-01T14:12:09","date_gmt":"2026-11-01T14:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/954412\/"},"modified":"2026-11-01T14:12:09","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T14:12:09","slug":"how-alvin-tedjo-won-mississauga-mayoral-election-upset","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/954412\/","title":{"rendered":"How Alvin Tedjo won Mississauga mayoral election upset"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Alvin Tedjo\u2019s campaign team walks down the stairs to their basement office a few days after their\u00a0victory<\/a> over the current and former mayors of Mississauga \u2014 the biggest election night upset in the GTA \u2014 they reach up and tap the Ted Lasso-inspired, hand-drawn yellow sign above the stairwell.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s almost too corny to be real, but just like coach Lasso\u2019s underdog team in the hit Apple TV show, they triumphed against the odds<\/a>\u00a0with\u00a0a poll-defying win<\/a> \u2014 one they\u2019re still not sure they can explain.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we saw the numbers rolling in, we were flabbergasted,\u201d said deputy campaign manager Kelly Singh, sitting in the \u201cMinistry of Content\u201d room where the social strategy is still mapped out on pink Post-it notes.<\/p>\n

\"post<\/p>\n

Some videos do better than others, the social team learned. Food-related videos always did the best.<\/p>\n

Andrew Francis Wallace\/Toronto Star<\/p>\n

Why did Alvin Tedjo win Mississauga?<\/p>\n

It might have been the appealing (or, according to his opponents, pandering) policies targeting affordability and safety. Or the relentless, attention-grabbing social media<\/a> ads that pushed Tedjo\u2019s face into every feed. Maybe it was the meet-and-greets they held everywhere from a pickleball court (Tedjo\u2019s mom\u2019s idea) to Ridgeway Plaza<\/a>, or the all-hands-on-deck get-out-the-vote push on election day.<\/p>\n

Maybe it wasn\u2019t something they did at all.<\/p>\n

Or even more simply, maybe voters were hungry for change in Mississauga and elsewhere. According to the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, nearly half of incumbent heads of council were defeated this election.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we offered something really cool and that resonated with people, but I don\u2019t think that gets tens of thousands of people to get off the couch,\u201d Singh said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the culture of Mississauga is changing \u2026 I wish I could say there\u2019s a recipe for that. There isn\u2019t. I think that Mississauga is just a different place now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Alvin<\/p>\n

Tedjo\u2019s campaign team, from left: Ryan Vopni, Kelly Singh,\u00a0Jey Jeyarasalingam\u00a0and Kris Pangilinan, in the so-called \u201cMinistry of Content\u201d room.<\/p>\n

Andrew Francis Wallace\/Toronto Star<\/p>\n

Did free ice cream help Alvin Tedjo win?<\/p>\n

Singh and campaign manager Ryan Vopni both worked on Tedjo\u2019s first run for mayor, taking on Parrish and others in the byelection just two years into his first term as councillor when Crombie left to become Ontario Liberal leader.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\n \"Who
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

He was a first-term councillor and a long-shot candidate. From high school student council to an unlikely win, here\u2019s what to know about Alvin Tedjo.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\n \"Who
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

He was a first-term councillor and a long-shot candidate. From high school student council to an unlikely win, here\u2019s what to know about Alvin Tedjo.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2024, we had nothing,\u201d said Vopni. \u201cWe had no money, no outside support, no hopes, no dreams.\u201d<\/p>\n

They joke their current office might have mould, but it was a big step up from the previous one \u2014 a former burrito shop where they had to repeatedly turn away customers.<\/p>\n

This time they not only had more resources \u2014 along with an unlimited supply of \u201cDiet Coke and anxiety\u201d\u00a0\u2014 they\u2019d also learned from fighting their way into second place<\/a> behind Parrish in 2024. Tedjo was going to be focused on reaching as many potential voters as possible who didn\u2019t know who he was.<\/p>\n

But with an assumed two-horse race taking up all the attention, they also needed to generate buzz.<\/p>\n

A compilation of videos that make up the quirky social media presence that might have helped score Alvin Tedjo a remarkable upset victory in the Mississauga mayor’s race.<\/p>\n

Toronto Star compilation<\/p>\n

An early idea was distributing branded freezies at mosques on Friday evenings\u00a0\u2014 freezies for the property tax freeze Tedjo was proposing.<\/p>\n

Sending a free ice-cream truck to a local high school that got the most votes in a social media contest\u00a0was another attention ploy. But it was one that operations manager Jey Jeyarasalingam thought would get kids to talk to their parents about Tedjo and the election, or even sign up to volunteer for their community service hours.<\/p>\n

The ice cream contest video ended up going viral, as thousands of kids pleaded for their school to win<\/a>\u00a0free soft-serve,\u00a0lamenting the \u201cextreme suffering from a lack of frozen desserts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need this, bro,\u201d said another. <\/p>\n

\u201cI had this vision of a stampede, and literally that\u2019s what happened,\u201d Jeyarasalingam said of the day they went to Stephen Lewis Secondary School. Everyone, including Tedjo, was suddenly trying to manage a line of ice cream crazed teens. \u201cIt was actually the most fun thing we did, hands down.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the urging of constituents who may be old enough to vote in the next election, and on the advice of his three kids, Tedjo (a Mississauga high school graduate himself) has pledged to keep the free ice cream contest<\/a>\u00a0going as mayor.<\/p>\n

Why Parrish and Crombie\u2019s campaigns didn\u2019t land<\/p>\n

As his profile in the race grew, Tedjo\u2019s moves were dismissed<\/a> by his two biggest rivals.<\/p>\n

Shortly before election day, Parrish ran an ad dismissing Tedjo\u2019s platform as \u201cfree ice cream.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNot promising all the treats people were looking for, and not alleviating their pressure during a bad period in our economic history was my mistake,\u201d Parrish said in her concession speech<\/a> on election night.<\/p>\n

Instead, the incumbent mayor tried to explain the budget stresses, police funding and her plan for downtown Mississauga in interviews and spreadsheet-filled newsletters she wrote herself. They didn\u2019t land.<\/p>\n

Parrish said her campaign chair had warned her that \u201cif you have to explain something in more than one sentence it is too complicated for the taxpayers to follow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crombie, having stepped down as Ontario Liberal leader after a failing to get elected as an MPP in the last provincial election, ran a more traditional campaign.<\/p>\n

It was the kind that had worked for her in past mayoral runs, down to her touting the 2014 endorsement of Hazel McCallion, the current endorsement of McCallion\u2019s granddaughter Erika and the praise of former Toronto mayor John Tory<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Crombie\u2019s ads looked more traditional than Tedjo\u2019s, too. Her communications strategist Jonathan Scott said having her try the more casual, front-facing video style mastered by Tedjo would only come off cringy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t regret that she didn\u2019t compete with him on that plane,\u201d said Scott. \u201cThat was his secret sauce and, you know, it wouldn\u2019t have worked for her.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Volunteers\"<\/p>\n

A \u201cteal army\u201d of volunteers helped make phone calls and knock on doors. One was attacked with a knife while putting up a sign, another canvassed every day rain or shine. On election day, the team estimates they had 350 or so volunteers trying to make sure supporters across the city voted.<\/p>\n

Andrew Francis Wallace\/Toronto Star<\/p>\n

Tedjo\u2019s director of communications, Madalyn\u00a0Calzavara, said Tedjo\u2019s campaign outspent both Crombie and Parrish\u2019s on social media ads\u00a0\u2014 a Meta ad analysis had them spending $103,600 compared to to $66,300 from Crombie and $10,500 from Parrish. On Election Day alone, the campaign had about 52 different ads running on various platforms, she said.<\/p>\n

People are busy \u2014 they don\u2019t answer their camera\u00a0doorbells or pick up calls from people they don\u2019t know, said Calzavara.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to think about how to reach people in different ways and you have to find a way to break through,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

So there were videos<\/a> of Tedjo interviewing himself or Tedjo winning the hardest endorsement of all \u2014 his daughter\u2019s. There was Tedjo drinking a durian shake, having lechon at Filipino supermarket Seafood City or grabbing a hot dog at Costco on election day (He promised to freeze taxes just like the big-box retailer froze the price of the $1.50 hot dog.)<\/p>\n

\"Tedjo<\/p>\n

Tedjo admits he drank six Diet Cokes on election day, and that he\u2019s the majority contributor to the campaign office collection of nearly 200 empty cans.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Andrew Francis Wallace\/Toronto Star<\/p>\n

But Tedjo also focused on his own story as the son\u00a0of immigrant parents\u00a0\u2014 one to which residents of Mississauga, which is now more than half made up of immigrants, can relate.<\/p>\n

Tedjo is the first mayor of Mississauga who isn\u2019t white. He\u2019s also a millennial, and at 43 is part of the \u201csandwich generation\u201d balancing raising kids and aging parents.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m like almost exactly the median age of people who live in Mississauga. And I wanted people to know that I could connect with their struggles,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Did Tedjo\u2019s Gaza stance help him win?<\/p>\n

Tedjo\u2019s campaign team said they wanted Tedjo\u2019s positions to be clear, even on issues many politicians don\u2019t want to touch.<\/p>\n

Tedjo said he hadn\u2019t publicly shared his personal views about Gaza before the election, in part because he didn\u2019t want to seem like he was pandering. But during this campaign he was repeatedly asked directly what he thought, including at a mayoral debate co-hosted by Muslim Network TV and others.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy family came to this country at a time of ethnic cleansing for Chinese-Indonesians,\u201d he said at the debate<\/a>. \u201cI understand that the community here has a need to be heard and seen. They want their city leadership to step up and acknowledge there is a genocide in Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tedjo has also committed to table a related motion for the city to support a pledge<\/a>, that includes \u201cworking to end all support to Israel\u2019s apartheid regime, settler colonialism and military occupation.\u201d\u00a0A\u00a0similar effort in Brampton<\/a> was ultimately withdrawn due to \u201csignificant financial and legal concerns\u201d identified by staff.<\/p>\n

Ginella Massa<\/a>, who co-hosted that debate, said Tedjo\u2019s widely shared answers might have been the \u201cdeciding factor\u201d for some Muslim voters, who make up one in six potential voters in the city. Parrish\u2019s absence at the debate left her unable to make the case for her history of support for Palestinians.<\/p>\n

Singh said the campaign knew the endorsement would cost them some votes, but said that other than affordability, community safety was top of mind for residents Tedjo spoke to and they had a plan that included nonpolice safety measures, including having mental health professionals respond<\/a> in some cases instead of police.<\/p>\n

\"Tedjo<\/p>\n

A volunteer helps clear out the Tedjo campaign office, full of signs from meet-and-greet events that helped introduce him to voters<\/p>\n

Andrew Francis Wallace\/Toronto Star<\/p>\n

How a \u2018Believe\u2019 sign kept the team hopeful<\/p>\n

Almost everyone on the campaign had their own moment when they thought they might actually win, but it never felt certain. Tedjo\u2019s was about two weeks before election day.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018If we lose, I don\u2019t understand anything. I don\u2019t understand politics,\u2019\u201d he said. Support was showing up in the socials that Calzavara and deputy communications director Kris Pangilinan were seeing, but it wasn\u2019t showing up as high in the polls.<\/p>\n

Vopni and Singh were reluctant to trust that likes on Instagram would translate into votes and didn\u2019t see any sign as good \u2014 not even indications that they\u2019d done well in advance polls.<\/p>\n

This is why Pangilinan made the first \u201cBelieve\u201d sign.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe kept talking about momentum,\u201d he said. \u201cI think there was a belief amongst all of us that we just needed to get over this one hump. And we didn\u2019t know what the hump was \u2026 and I was like, \u2018You know what? Let\u2019s put a Believe sign up.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Singh cringes, but admits it helped.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hated myself the first time I tapped the sign,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Then came a day she felt \u201cwe\u2019re going to get destroyed and I was coming down the stairs and I tapped the sign; I\u2019m such a cornball, but now I tap it every time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Arlene<\/p>\n

Alvin Tedjo\u2019s sister, and volunteer coordinator, Arlene Tedjo, packs away leftover election signs<\/p>\n

Andrew Francis Wallace\/Toronto Star<\/p>\n

Arlene Tedjo, the new mayor\u2019s younger sister, thought they\u2019d pull it off when she couldn\u2019t keep up with the volunteer requests starting around Thanksgiving weekend. She was a handful of months into her maternity leave with her son, Emmett, when she realized the campaign needed a new volunteer co-ordinator, so she stepped up.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always knew Alvin was going to be mayor or something of that calibre,\u201d she said, crediting their parents.<\/p>\n

She is a nurse and their youngest brother is a psychotherapist. \u201cWe all have always, since we were really young, seen the value in helping people,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She suddenly burst into tears thinking about how hard her parents worked to get Tedjo elected \u2014 including their father, who\u2019s in his seventies, putting up more than 500 signs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a full family effort to make sure that we did everything we could to help out and cross that finish line because we believe in him,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Can Alvin Tedjo deliver?<\/p>\n

Tedjo doesn\u2019t love the comparisons that have been made<\/a> between him and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, both for their ease with social media and for making big and potentially unrealistic promises.<\/p>\n

Flattering as it is, he wants to be seen as his own person. But he does think that he and Mamdani might have tapped into the same frustration from voters who see their leaders not fighting hard enough.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople just want you to be trying to make their lives better,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

That feeling might have helped him win, but now he has to make the change he promised.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we started this campaign six months ago, we knew it was going to be a tough road,\u201d he said in his first press conference<\/a> as mayor-elect. \u201cThe road ahead will be just as difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n