Mississauga needs a bold Parrish

Carolyn Parrish has just won the safest job in Canadian politics.

- EDWARD KEENAN

Mississauga Mayor-elect Carolyn Parrish is congratulated by former mayor Bonnie Crombie at Parrish's victory party Monday night. Mississauga is now grappling with big-city problems, and a lot of the old formulas won't work to fix them, Edward Keenan writes.

The last time an incumbent Mississauga mayor lost an election was 1978. In that time, we’ve seen six different sitting prime ministers and five different sitting Ontario premiers lose elections. Meanwhile, the only two people before Parrish to hold the Mississauga mayor’s job in the last 45 years (like Parrish, both famously plain-spoken women) barely even faced a serious competitor. If history is a guide, it is like a U.S. Supreme Court seat: yours for life, or at least as long as you want it.

And though it appeared at first — and even in the home stretch as polls narrowed somewhat — to be an unusually competitive election by the historic standards of Canada’s seventh-largest municipality, Parrish also won it by pursuing a “safe,” front-runner-style campaign.

She skipped all the debates except one, and in the home stretch of the campaign mostly appeared at events in private settings where a friendly crowd could be assured.

A safe campaign for a supersafe job. Turned out it worked.