A Breath Of Fresh Air In The Polical Arena

He's not mayor but his team is tops
Shaun Bruce squad wins 2 awards for mayoral campaign
April 19, 2007
John Spears
City hall bureau

Their candidate finished ninth of 38 in the Toronto election last November, but the Shaun Bruce mayoral campaign team keeps on winning.

The 33 students at University of Guelph-Humber who ran a classmate for mayor have won the top award in a worldwide competition sponsored by the International Association of Business Communicators.

They've also picked up an award from the Canadian Public Relations Society for the campaign, in which candidate Bruce pushed youth issues, including free public transit for post-secondary students.

Now the students are scraping together some money so as many as possible can travel to New Orleans to pick up the award in June.

The students parlayed a budget of a little more than $3,000 into a campaign that got them wide media coverage and won 2,820 votes for Shaun Bruce, the class member who stood as the candidate.

The rest of the class pitched in to formulate a platform, raise money, look for ways to publicize the campaign and run events.

By one measure, they beat Miller handily. The mayor spent $1.1 million to garner 332,969 votes, more than $3 spent for each vote he received. Bruce's frugal campaign reaped nearly one vote for each dollar spent – three times as effective as Miller.

The thought of a Miller-sized budget still dazzles Daniella Cross, one of the campaign co-chairs. "Imagine what we could have done with $1 million," she said.

The team ran the campaign as a class project and had to submit a detailed report on their experience. Cross submitted a version of their class report as the entry for the Canadian and international awards.

Scott Langdon, who taught the class, has never seen a group like it. "This will never in one million years happen again, this group of kids," he said.

The students graduate in June, but they may have a hard time getting together to celebrate before then: They're all off working as interns this semester.