In the run-up to this month’s municipal election, the Star is profiling several key battleground races, offering intimate portraits of the candidates and the issues moving voters. In today’s spotlight is Mississauga.
The Mississauga mayoral race has been a winding Shakespearean tale featuring a 15-year rivalry, a possibly hubristic return, a debate stage duel, the sudden emergence of a dark horse and the looming presence of a ghost.
There is incumbent Carolyn Parrish, who realized her decades-old dream of becoming mayor when then-mayor Bonnie Crombie quit to become Ontario Liberal leader.
There is Crombie, who succeeded the inimitable Hazel McCallion after her 36-year tenure, won her third mayoral election in a landslide and is invoking McCallion’s name to do so again in a high-stakes comeback following her failed bid to oust Premier Doug Ford.
And, inching closer in the nailbitingly tight polls, is Alvin Tedjo, a rookie councillor who grew up in downtown Mississauga where his Chinese-Indonesian parents settled when he was four. Tedjo started the race polling behind his council colleague Dipika Damerla, but now seems to have swept past her and into the role of the generational change candidate.
“I think it’s very fluid,” said Councillor Brad Butt (a Parrish supporter) of the race. “I just don’t know what the ballot question is going to be when people actually get there for the mayoral race.”
The Feud
In 2023, Carolyn Parrish signed herself and her husband up for provincial Liberal memberships and voted for Bonnie Crombie to win the leadership.
“To get rid of her,” she said, cracking a smile, because she knows this is just the kind of comment she shouldn’t make. “I wanted the job.”
Before entering the council chamber, Parrish was a teacher turned school trustee turned Liberal MP turned independent MP, infamous for her barbs about George W. Bush and the invasion of Iraq that included the hot mic comment: “Damn Americans, I hate those bastards!”
When she left Ottawa in 2005, there was speculation that she’d take a run at the mayor’s chair when McCallion decided to retire — it turned out that would still be almost 20 years away. In the meantime, Parrish was elected to council and became McCallion’s chief antagonist.
Parrish lost to a McCallion-backed challenger in 2010 and so went head-to-head with Crombie for the first time in a 2011 byelection for Ward 5.
Crombie won that round by just 241 votes with McCallion’s help.
“Mayor is the dream job, no question,” said Parrish from her office overlooking the city. But when McCallion finally retired in 2014, Parrish decided not to enter the race for mayor. Instead, she set her sights on the council seat left vacant by Crombie who was running for mayor against Steve Mahoney.
“Bonnie had been here and was kind of following Hazel around carrying her purse. So I just looked at it and thought, nah, I just want to be a councillor. I was happy,” Parrish said.
Crombie won the battle for mayor with a last-minute endorsement from McCallion, and Parrish became a councillor.
“I was kind of like the mayor of Malton,” she said, citing one of her proudest achievements: the Malton youth hub that she is pushing to replicate elsewhere in the city.
Then Crombie, who easily won her third term as mayor in 2022, decided to run for Liberal leader. Parrish, then 77, seized her moment, resigning her council seat to dedicate herself to winning the mayoral byelection. She became mayor in 2024, beating Tedjo who came in second.
Through the campaign Parrish has periodically posted on X a CP24 clip from her mayoral election night victory where Crombie hugs Parrish, and then steps out in front of her to the TV cameras to say she will be a “formidable mayor.” But there is more to it than just cheekily pointing out the praise: Crombie stepped into her spotlight and stayed there.
“It annoyed the hell out of me at the time. It really annoyed my family. It was like, that was your night. It’s OK, I was out with the crowd and having a great time. But every once in a while I put it on because she’s saying terrible things about me,” said Parrish. “It’s the bad part of me.”
When she finally became mayor she set about doing the things she’d wanted to for a long time: getting housing built faster and bringing in snow windrow clearing. A next term would focus on her plan to transform downtown Mississauga.
Moreover, she said, she has a handshake deal with Premier Doug Ford (unconfirmed by him at this time) that he will fix the Peel police funding formula, convincing him with a chart (reproduced in her latest election pamphlet that she wrote herself on her phone) that shows it unfairly leaves Mississauga taxpayers subsidizing Brampton.
Ford is rooting for her to win, she said, though she wishes he wouldn’t have joked that he’d send an army to support her against Crombie. There is, Parrish stresses, no army. She’s been campaigning mostly as she always has in diverse Mississauga: “I’ve built good relationships with a lot of the ethnic groups and I just keep going with them.”
Parrish, who proudly displays photos of her five grandchildren in her office, just turned 80 and maintains her age shouldn’t be a concern to voters — she’s not even ruling out another term if she’s still got work to do.
“I don’t plan to pass away anytime soon,” she said, and her new titanium knee is in excellent working order. “I have more energy than most people half my age.”
The Return
Crombie weighed the call to come back until the last moment.
Observers of the race have called her decision to step back in the ring extremely risky, forcing her to both persuade voters that she isn’t looking to be handed her old job back and defend her own record in the first truly competitive race since she was initially elected mayor.
At the Shore Grill and Grotto in Port Credit, owner Maureen O’Neill-Pikul said it really irks her that Crombie’s run for premier is being held against her.
“She left to do something better for Ontario. She already did it for Mississauga,” she said, adding that she became a fan of her during the pandemic when Crombie reached out personally to check in while restaurants were struggling. “I think we’d be lucky to have her back.”
Crombie said she felt compelled to run because residents who see her around the city asked her to. When a group of Chinese seniors say property taxes have gotten too high, she agrees and promises to bring McCallion’s “fiscal responsibility” back to city hall (they also say the 66-year-old is more beautiful in person than in her campaign photos). She wants to fix the problems she hears about, like from the owners of Cousins Market, whose business has suffered significantly due to traffic from the prolonged Hurontario LRT construction.
But she has a new idea, too: bringing in the subway extension McCallion turned down — a plan her opponents have said is a practical non-starter, especially if actual progress is made on an all-day Milton GO line.
The Duel
The night of the now notorious Oct. 1 mayoral debate at Food Banks Mississauga, Crombie was already on edge. She was worried about what sounded like a safety threat related to a future debate (it was the threat of an injunction rather than to her safety, it turned out). And earlier that week she’d been fielding questions about her ex-husband.
“That just kind of irks most strong women, right,” said Christine Slota, walking up to Crombie at Meadowvale Community Centre two days before the debate. She’d heard something about Parrish involving Crombie’s ex-husband in her campaign. “It’s dirty politics.”
The campaign was already sharper in tone than most — Crombie launched her campaign with a blistering attack on Parrish’s time as mayor — but to Crombie it felt like Parrish crossed a line by doing an interview with Crombie’s ex-husband, Brian Crombie, on his Mississauga radio show and podcast (something Tedjo, Damerla and other politicians and candidates have done). Then Parrish’s campaign bought radio time on Newstalk 1010 and Brian gave her permission to rebroadcast the interview. The gossipy details quickly circulated online.
“It’s more her that weaponized it, but he didn’t have to agree,” said Crombie, adding that their children are “really disappointed too.”
Parrish denies that was her intent, she said she just thought Brian Crombie would do a good interview. He did, and her team thought it should be aired more widely, she said.
“I’m not that devious. That would be pretty cynical thinking,” Parrish said of the charge that it was done maliciously. “And that’s not me.”
On the debate stage the simmering campaign tensions boiled over into now-viral clips and memes, culminating in Parrish finally snapping that city staff are “terrified the blond bombshell is coming back.”
It may be one of the most pivotal moments of the campaign, and marks a turning point for Tedjo, who stood to the side watching his rivals tear into each other. Though his campaign did make a statement, the moment spoke for itself. Do you want more old Mississauga politics, or someone new?
The Dark Horse
If Crombie’s choice to come back seems dicey, Tedjo’s decision to leave his likely safe council seat to run for mayor seemed positively ludicrous, especially once Crombie jumped back in the ring.
“It was really nerve-wracking,” said Tedjo.
But his wife, a pediatric nurse, and three kids told him to go for it.
Within the past two weeks, Tedjo’s campaign has begun to snowball, beginning with an unprecedented Peel police union endorsement that doubled as a snub of Parrish and Crombie. It’s not just the polls that are showing momentum, Tedjo added. They can’t keep up with the demand for signs. Engagement is spiking on his social media. People he hasn’t spoken to in decades have popped up to cheer him on.
Canvassing one evening in his neighbourhood with a group of volunteers including his wife and kids (“My dad is running for mayor!”), Tedjo zigzagged from door to door. He leads with alluring affordability focused policies such as freezing property taxes for two years and a property tax increase deferral program for seniors.
His opponents, and even some supporters, say a tax freeze ignores the realities of the budget, including the police budget increases he supported. But Tedjo maintains it can be done and sometimes — half-grudgingly given the sibling rivalry between the cities — he points to the effectiveness of Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown in executing his vision.
While there has been sparring among them, both Parrish and Crombie have said Tedjo has been an excellent councillor and that it is a waste that, should he lose his bid for mayor, he will no longer be on council. They also both said he doesn’t have the experience needed to lead the city.
“I would say just watch us. There’s so many great leaders out there who have taken on an office like this and ran with it,” said Tedjo, wryly noting that at 43 he is 10 years older than New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
On Thursday night, at a popular coffee shop in Ridgeway Plaza, Tedjo held a bustling meet-and-greet. One woman said she voted for Parrish in the byelection (she appreciates Parrish is pro-Palestine) but found the debate performance not “mayoral” for either Parrish or Crombie. She isn’t sure the math on Tedjo’s plan adds up, but, importantly, she trusts him, he is young and she thinks he will do his best.
“I’ve never been one for politics,” said Ajay Chikermane, who has lived in Mississauga for 32 years. He’s found Tedjo resonates over the former and current mayors. “I think my three kids and their kids need a different type of leader.”
The Ghost
Canvassing on a street in Meadowvale, Crombie knocked on the door of a couple who seem initially unsupportive. Crombie wins them over by reminding them of her connection with McCallion.
McCallion “should have been Prime Minister,” said the woman. “And you’d have been her assistant.”
It has not been easy for Crombie to shine in the shadow of Hurricane Hazel. And now, 12 years after she was first-elected mayor, Crombie is still holding on to the seal of approval McCallion gave her back in 2014. On Friday, she touted the endorsement of McCallion’s granddaughter Erika (an antidote of sorts to a previous anti-endorsement from McCallion’s son Peter).
McCallion is obviously not here to speak for herself; she died more than three years ago at the age of 101.
And rather remarkably given their early history, McCallion became a supporter of Parrish’s hard work in her retirement.
“It’s not that I think Hazel would like Carolyn to be mayor, but Hazel regretted Bonnie being mayor in her final years,” said former councillor Pat Saito, a longtime friend to McCallion and supporter of Parrish.
More than anything, though, it is unclear if voters in 2026 will be making decisions based on what they think McCallion would have wanted.
Polling from Liaison Strategies found that McCallion’s legacy is still important at some level to 75 per cent of voters, particularly to seniors. Only 29 per cent of all voters said McCallion’s approval of their choice in mayor is very important or somewhat important.
In a close three-horse race, with Damerla vowing to remain in the fight despite trailing fourth in the polls, this is an election that could be won with a little over 30 per cent of the vote. Invoking McCallion from beyond the grave could still be a winning strategy.
