While many young people will be spending the next few weeks cramming for midterm exams, a group of their peers will be hitting the pavement to achieve a high score of a different sort – a win in the city’s upcoming municipal elections.

Sometimes dismissed as bright-eyed enthusiasts, these young people say they’re not running for fun or just to get attention. Hard-working, determined and full of can-do gusto, a number of young candidates are running serious campaigns for elected office across the city.

Participating on a recent CP24 panel discussion, three of them said they’re hitting the streets hard to try and earn votes.

“I do at least two to three canvasses a day – as many as I can,” said Ahmed Belkadi, a 24-year-old man running for council in Ward 16.

“My goal is to do 600 houses in a day,” added Ward 36 candidate Masihullah Mohebzada, a 22-year-old man.

Ward 2 candidate Munira Abukar, a 22-year-old Muslim woman who now finds herself running against Rob Ford, said that she works hard to meet residents where they’ll have time to talk, even if that means visiting bus stops before the sun comes up.

“We do a morning canvass because we want to talk with mothers who are available because you have to know your community,” Abukar said.

Not a learning experience

All three are running to unseat incumbents, a tall order for any candidate.

Just ask Henry Argasinski. The then-18-year-old ran for mayor in 1976 against popular incumbent David Crombie.

Running on a pro-development platform at a time when the city was enacting strict height limits, the teen managed to finish third with about four thousand votes, beating out at least half a dozen other contenders.

“I think that election did give me a little bit of insight into how city government works,” Argasinski, now vice-president of a development company, told cp24.com in a phone interview from his home near Detroit.

While he said some people thought he was strange for running, he got a lot of encouragement from parents, teachers and friends and even ended up forming a debate carpool with other long-shot contenders.

However unlike many young candidates in the 2014 election, Argasinski said his goal was never really to win.

“I basically wanted to highlight that you can’t stymie development because everything else will grind to a halt and that was my whole message.”

Argasinski said he never wanted to beat Crombie and saw his run as a learning experience.

But that doesn’t sit well with Morgan Baskin, a 19-year-old candidate currently running for mayor.

Baskin, who recently took part in an arts debate alongside leading candidates John Tory, Doug Ford and Olivia Chow, has received praise for being articulate and managing to get her message out in a crowded field of candidates.

While her campaign has been focused on youth issues, such as the high rate of unemployment, she’s adamant that she’s not just running to raise awareness.

“Running for mayor when you don’t want to win is an insult to the whole idea,” Baskin told cp24.com in a recent interview.

Although she realizes she doesn’t show up on any of the mayoral polls that ask about frontrunner candidates, she said she’s running her campaign with winning in mind.

“If people choose you, that (winning) is a possibility. Even if that possibility is tiny, you chose to run for mayor and that has to be your priority,” Baskin said, adding that it’s an insult to anyone who votes for you if you say you’re not trying to win.

So why not run for lower office to get one’s feet wet first, perhaps for a seat as a school trustee?

“I didn’t feel passionate about it,” Baskin said bluntly. “I don’t want to be a school trustee. I would do a bad job. I feel fine about my ward -- there’s not a lot I would change.

“I think there are so many things that need to happen at a city-wide level so that’s what I ran for.”

Ageism a problem

That said, all the young candidates said that they experience some discrimination when it comes to their age.

“As I tell the voters out there, don’t look at someone’s age; look at what they’ll bring, what kind of change they’ll bring to your community, to your city,” Mohebzada said. “It’s not about age. I could be 19 running for council or I could be 30 running for council. It’s about what I’ll bring and what my intention is to do for you.”

For Baskin, age has been a double-edged sword when it comes to campaigning.

“Being young is kind of a double edged sword. Sometimes it’s incredibly hard to get people to take me seriously,” Baskin said. “But it also means a lot of people pay attention to my campaign when they wouldn’t have otherwise.”

She said it’s annoying not to be included in more debates, but she doesn’t get flustered about it.

As for what these energetic young people will do if they don’t get elected?

“There will be lots of plans I can make on October 28, but I’m not making them now,” Baskin said.

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