Kelowna council candidate goes viral over campaign humour

Kelowna council candidate, businessman and millennial Brady Rogers has gone viral for his sense of campaign humour.

“I decided I wanted some signs and had some funny ideas, so I put it out on Instagram to raise some money and set up a campaign,” Rogers, 33, told Postmedia.

One of Rogers signs states “Brady Rogers for city council. Don’t worry, I’ll fix everything. Terms and conditions apply.”

On the sign is a QR code that links to Roger’s campaign page, stating he doesn’t enjoy politics, doesn’t know what he is doing and is not qualified to be a politician. It goes on to state “Fine, I’ll do it.”

American influencer Mandi Jung (mandifromtheinternet) noticed a post on X that showed one of Roger’s 35 campaign signs.

Dubbing it “the most millennial thing I have seen in my entire life” Jung posted to her 100,000 followers, leading to 147,000 likes.

This led to a wave of interest in Rogers campaign and donations to his efforts from around the world.

“This last week especially has been pretty wild,” he said. “It’s been very unexpected. Locally I’ve been getting attention, but then somebody in the states I guess found me and made a reel about my campaign and it’s I think had one and a half million views or something.”

Rogers, who runs a business converting plastic waste to household products using 3D printers, said the goal of his humour was to draw interest to his campaign and ultimately to encourage people to vote.

“Funny is different than unserious,” he said.

“Our city has a lot of good initiatives and good work being done on it. But I’m looking at how we can better integrate some of those initiatives and perhaps provide more unified leadership on it,” Rogers said.

“There’s more the city can be doing to address the immediate concerns that businesses and residents have around things like open drug use. I’ve been looking into the idea of perhaps testing a zero-tolerance policy in Kelowna around open drug use. It’s not going to stop people from doing drugs, but I think it would mean a lot to businesses if we could at least push the drug use off the streets.”

Rogers said he also wants to encourage the development of co-op housing and bolster the city’s public transit system.

He said that as a business owner he could manage the council workload.

“It is a part-time gig, but every Monday is a full day. And then most councillors end up on committees which is an additional time commitment. And of course you have a lot of home work outside of meetings,” Rogers said.

“I may not have the inclination to do it, but I have the time and desire to be part of this.”

Rogers is up against 36 other council candidates.

They are Susan Ames, Les Bellamy, Chris Bocskei, Doris Maria Bregolisse, Nikki Renee Csek, Greg Dahms, Todd Christopher Daniels, Maxine DeHart, Indy Dhial, Crystal Dougan, Tim Down, Julia Fraser, Daniel Gordon Fritter, Bal Grewal, King James III, Hamid Khajavi, Kevin Aaron Kraft, Davis Kyle, Gord Lovegrove, Teresa May, Trevor McAleese, Randy Millis, H. Morales, Brian James Pinter, JC Rathwell, Brian Rogers, Mike Rose, Todd Robert Sanderson, Corey Severin, Mohini Singh, Glendon Charles Smedley, Silverado Brooks Socrates, Laura Thurnheer, Lee-Ann Tiede, Rick Webber and Rob Wilkinson.

Municipal election day is Oct. 17.

dcarrigg@postmedia.com