Mayor change: candidates, including the mayor-elect, are looking to help pay off their campaign debts (Image: Shaun Merritt)
After long election campaigns, there’s almost always the ugly aftermath of debt—specifically, the debts that campaigns rack up because they spent more money than they raised from supporters. Toronto’s mayoral election was no exception. But the city’s leading class (some might even call them “elites”) has an idea that might solve this fiscal problem: a fundraising “unity dinner” to help retire all the candidates’ debts. Two snags: 1) Joe Pantalone and George Smitherman don’t want to be unified with their erstwhile opponents, and 2) the event would overwhelmingly benefit Rob Ford, who is believed to have debts greater than the other candidates’ combined.
Read the rest of this entry »
As the campaign enters its final five days, the basic divide doesn’t seem to be changing much: Rob Ford and George Smitherman are basically tied around 40 per cent, with Joe Pantalone in a distant third with about 15 per cent. This leaves the city’s left with a problem they haven’t had in a while: deciding whether to vote their hearts and throw their support to Pantalone, or vote for Smitherman as a way of blocking Ford’s ascent.
While the Globe was getting into some trouble Saturday morning with its Ford-is-fat story, the Toronto Sun and Toronto Star both made their official endorsements for mayor of Toronto. Surprising absolutely nobody, 
Arriving at the Rocco Rossi campaign headquarters at 9 p.m. last night was pretty surreal for the glut of reporters who responded to his announcement. Up until a few hours before, Rossi was considered one of the serious, if struggling, candidates in the race. That all changed at 4 p.m., when a Newstalk 1010 poll conducted by Ipsos Reid showed Rossi badly trailing at four per cent—and only three per cent among committed voters. (To put this in perspective: the poll’s margin of error is 4.9 per cent.) In just over an hour, the Rossi campaign sent out a press release saying he was still in the race, followed by another release at 7:30 saying Rossi would “make an important announcement” later in the evening. Somewhere between the two press releases—5:30 and 7:30 yesterday evening—Rossi decided to drop out. Perhaps more significantly, he is not endorsing another candidate. 
As of 12:01 this morning, candidates for municipal office can officially put their signs up all over Toronto (and keep them there until October 28, when they have to be removed). Like locusts, this plague will pass quickly through the city, and by the end, all we’ll be left with is the lamentations of the victims: the losing campaigns, and anyone who has to figure out how to fit the sign into a recycling bin. 