The Ben Mulroney Show - Brady Rogers - The Viral Candidate Who Barely Wants to Win

Episode Date: October 7, 2026

On today's episode of "The Ben Mulroney Show," Ben welcomes Brady Rogers, a municipal candidate from Kelowna, B.C. Brady's unique and unorthodox campaign has gone viral for his admission that he barely wants to win and has no interest in being a politician. Instagram - @iambradythecreator  If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠   Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Enjoy   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Standard messaging and data rates may apply. There's a line near the end of the dark night where Batman is on the run. And the soon-to-be Commissioner Gordon says, or I think he's Commissioner Gordon at this point, tells his son, he said Batman is not the hero we deserve. He's the hero we need, something like that. This next guest is running for city council in Kelowna. And he's probably not the candidate we deserve,

but he's absolutely the candidate that we need. I'd like to introduce you if you don't already know, because he's gone viral, to Brady Rogers. Brady, welcome to the show. Oh, we don't have him yet. Oh, we don't have him yet. All right, so let me explain to you who Brady Rogers is. as far as I know thus far.

I'm going to get to know him better in a minute. But Brady is, he has gone viral. His Instagram is I am Brady the creator. And I think he's an engineer who then became an entrepreneur and started a shop where I think they repurpose plastic goods. And he has decided to run for city council. We're going to give him a call. Yeah, we got him now. There he is.

Brady, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks having me. So I've got so many questions for you. You popped up on my feed. And I don't know how much of your campaign is by design or it's a happy accident. But when you put up a sign that says, I barely want to do this, you must know it's going to go. Like I thought for a second this clearly a stunt, but then I listened to some of your ideas and hearing you speak, you're a thoughtful person. You care about your community.

You don't really care for the politics of it all. But there's nothing wrong with that. So talk to me about your thinking on jumping into this race. Yeah, well, the signs, I mean, they came from a pretty authentic place, to be honest. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not a politician. I was pretty reluctant to do this. It was not what I expected to be doing this year.

But it came about as I was kind of just doing some of my own investigation about issues in Colonna and it realized maybe I actually have something to contribute here. So as much as I may not want to. Was there one issue that tipped you over the edge? Yeah, it's this, there's been this ongoing battle for the last six years or so between a local hotel and the city. Because the hotel closed off part of the public boardwalk that goes in front of their hotel. And he's using it as a private patio. So that was just a personal gripe of mine that I decided to do a video about online, which went sort of viral here and led to, well, so much more.

So you've decided to jump in on your website. It says, like, do I like politics? No. Am I qualified? Also no. So there is a level of humor there, but you seem to be threading the, because again, when I've heard, when I've heard the words come out of your mouth, you're not, you're not taking this, like you're exceptionally self-aware.

Like, you don't like politics, but you know it requires thought and you know that it requires hard work. And so you're threading that needle very, very well. but stranger things have happened than good and decent people going in and saying I'm going to buck the system and then have the system

chew them up and spit them out what are your thoughts this laid in the race I think that I mean my whole campaign comes from a very authentic place I have thought a lot about it it aligns with what I've already

been doing in my own life and I think that if it resonates with the people they're going to vote for me and I'm going to keep doing what I do. If they don't, that's okay. I'm going to live my life anyway and keep working on problems I can control. What is the reaction when you go knocking on doors asking people for their vote? I have not done any door knocking at all.

Oh. Okay. That's part of my inexperience as a politician, I suppose, didn't even cross my mind. But also, I've chosen social media as my main. platform and put my energy there. He can only do so many things. Yeah. Is there anything about the process thus far that you've been pleasantly surprised by? Yeah, I guess quite a few things. What comes to mind immediately is in conversations with our city manager and current mayor and various administrators. I've realized the city actually

has a lot of good things going on. We do a lot of good initiatives. Our finances actually are look pretty good. We do a lot of external audits and that sort of thing. So I think there's actually a lot of good work happening here. I just have some ideas to perhaps shift focuses in different places and that sort of thing. All right. Well, let's take a couple of minutes. Tell me about some of those ideas. Well, for one thing, homelessness is a huge issue here as it is in, I think, most city. And like I said, we have a lot of good initiatives going on around treatment and crime and a community safety plan and that sort of thing. But what seems to be missing, in my mind, coming from an engineering standpoint, is there isn't really a unified plan with a timeline and specific measurable goals

and somebody at the top of it who says, this is the plan, I'm the one responsible for making sure it happens. It's kind of a lot of collaboration and initiatives. So I think there's some improvement that can be done there to make those initiatives more effective and timely. And then the flip side of it, there's, well, there's measurable improvements in crime and various statistics around Colonna. A lot of small businesses and residents are just not feeling that. They're still dealing with open drug use and things like that. So I think there's a little more the city can do to address things tomorrow, such as open drug use. One thing I've been digging into, the feasibility of is can we work with the RCMP to create basically a policy?

policy of if we see it, we take it and make a consequence for open drug use, take the drugs, paraphernalia. It's not going to help. So just take it away from them and just walk away? Yeah, pretty much. I mean, it's not feasible to arrest everybody. And it's not solving anything really. But it would mean a lot for the businesses, I think, if we could simply encourage them to not do drugs on the street. Yeah, you know, there's, the, the drum that I beat. quite often on this show is there need to be consequences to actions.

I mean, in certain cases where the stakes are very high, in certain cases, life and death, there's almost a consequence-free environment for some pretty deadly behavior. And not to say we're going to save that person's life, but it's going to raise the stakes over a particular type of behavior. And you're right, it's by no means a solution. We have to have a proper pathway for medical intervention. and mental health resources and ultimately reintegration into society. But until we get there, we have to still add a little bit of friction to the life of the drug user.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And yeah, these small businesses matter a lot too, and they're dealing with consequences right now. And you're a small business owner, so there must be some people lining up from the entrepreneurial class who are supporting you? I hope so. Yeah, I've had a lot of good conversations with other business owners. We're fortunate to be in an area of downtown where the bylaw officers do specific patrols to kind of essentially shoe away homeless people, honestly. But talking to some in the north end of downtown, they don't have that, and they're dealing with it.

Lastly, I saw a video where you and two friends competed to see who could get to the airport faster. One took the bus, one drove, and you took a scooter. I think you were the last one there. But the delta between all three, it was pretty tight. I mean, I think the difference was an additional 10 minutes or something like that. What was the point of that? And what did you learn?

We were highlighting our focus on public transportation, especially the reliability and timeliness, getting from downtown all the way to the airport, which is a pretty major route for a lot of residents and tourists. Our thinking is, or at least I should say my thinking, I don't want to speak for them. But my thinking is we have a lot of bus coverage that covers a map. But I think we could perhaps shift focus to prioritizing coverage of people that actually rely on transit for going to work and using it every day.

And ultimately, perhaps reduce the need for families to have two cars. Maybe they can go down to one or even from one to zero. I think that's what effect of transit is. Well, I've been speaking with Brady Rogers. you can find them on Instagram and I am Brady the Creator. Any other handles you want people to know about? No, that's my main one. My website is www.

Yeah. BradyThecreated.com. I am Brady the Creator. Look, day after election day, if he wins, he'll be fine. If he doesn't win, he'll be fine. But my take is if he wins, I think Colonna is in better shape. Brady, I really appreciate your time. I wish you the best of luck, my friend.

Thanks a lot.