Like February 29th for the perpetually cynical, election day is that one moment every four years when municipal politics junkies get their fix. With any luck, today’s excitement will tide us over until 2014, assuming the world doesn’t end before then. It’s hard to recall a time before this election season—we believe Rocco Rossi announced sometime in 1973—so we’re already starting to miss the daily sniping, the desperate wait for new polls and the unending debates. Even this past weekend, the race heated up even further. According to the Toronto Star, some Rob Ford supporters apparently posted signs asking if Muslims should vote for a gay man, and a Tamil-language radio ad explicitly said traditional Tamils shouldn’t vote for George Smitherman because he’s gay (a full translation is available here, from Xtra).
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Social media in Toronto’s election: a sampling of blunders
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One of the much talked-about aspects of Calgary’s recent election has been how Naheed Nenshi successfully transformed social media, Twitter especially, into a campaign tool. Compare that innovation with how Toronto’s candidates have been using social media, and our mayoral hopefuls do not come out looking great. Yes, all of the major candidates—and most of the minor ones—have been using Twitter and Facebook. But no, it hasn’t mattered a lot. If Web smarts had been a major force in this campaign, we’d all be asking ourselves if prolific tweeter Rocco Rossi was going to be able to close the gap with tweetmaster Himy Syed. (We assume, in that alternate reality as in this one, that neither Rebel Mayor nor Steve Murray would be on the ballot.) Instead, where the election has featured social media, it’s mainly been in ways that the candidates would like to forget. Here, a sampling of social media blunders from the mayor’s race.
Mo Problems, Mo Money: Ford’s scandals brought in a ton of cash, but less than Pantalone
(Image: Scott Snider, from the torontolife.com Flickr pool)
Politicians spend a lot of time and money trying to avoid scandals, except, of course, for when they don’t. The latest disclosures from the Rob Ford campaign make us wonder if all that effort was wasted. Turns out that donations to Ford surged after his various scandals hit the papers.
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“Rob [Ford] could commit murder on the steps of city hall and they would still vote for him”: Doug Ford, campaign manager
Doug Ford, describing the support his brother Rob Ford has in Etobicoke North, was quoted thusly this morning by the Toronto Sun: “Rob could commit murder on the steps of city hall and they would still vote for him.” There are a few problems with this notion, but the biggest—as pointed out by Alex Stoutley—is that city hall doesn’t actually have steps.
Head versus heart: Toronto’s lefties grapple with their choice—Pantalone or not-Ford?
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.
Despite his very recent adaptation of the progressive label, Smitherman hasn’t made it easy for lefties to sign up. There was his long campaign against the Miller legacy in the early part of the campaign, the way he adopted some of Ford’s ideas (for example, his awfully similar financial plan), and his willingness to discuss privatizing certain parts of the TTC. All of this makes many lefties nervous.
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Final TV debate of the mayor’s race features even more shouting than normal
Last night, the three front-running candidates for the mayor’s office—Rob Ford, George Smitherman and Joe Pantalone—sat down at the Masonic Temple for their final debate before Monday’s election. At this point, both Smitherman and Ford are clearly hoping for a knockout that would end the stalemate in the polls and shove one of them clearly into the lead. Did either of them get their wish?
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One week out, Toronto’s election gets crazier by the day
The polls will close in just over a week, but the election race in Toronto keeps getting odder and odder. Here’s a roundup of election errata: some of it is zany fun; other stuff is just weird; and just for good luck, we’ll throw in some useful information.
• A few months back, the city released an ad for a municipal service that was both engaging and funny. That alone was news, but it’s also been parodied and put to use as—what else?—a video against Rob Ford (at left). Hey, they can’t all be Old Spice parodies.
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Toronto’s weekend of entirely unsurprising mayoral endorsements
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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, the Star endorsed George Smitherman and the Sun endorsed Rob Ford. We haven’t seen an endorsement this predictable since Jack Layton and Olivia Chow endorsed Joe Pantalone.
Globe and Mail calls Rob Ford fat, hilarity ensues
Rob Ford poses with some members of his team (Image: Shaun Merritt)
It’s official: after a 10-month mayoral campaign, the papers are running out of political things to talk about, and the media itself is becoming the story. The Saturday Globe and Mail’s city section ran a piece titled “Rob Ford’s not popular despite being fat. He’s popular because of it.” The article argues that voters like politicians with some literal heft to them and that weight loss was pretty much the only thing David Miller accomplished in his seven years as mayor. The piece, written by Stephen Marche, has gone over like a lead balloon and has been pulled from the Globe’s Web site.
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The anyone-but-Ford bandwagon gets a bit more cramped: Adam Vaughan endorses Smitherman
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With the election now 10 days away and polls being increasingly unkind to anyone but the front-runners (that’s you, Pants), Toronto is settling somewhat uncomfortably into a predictable two-man race: George Smitherman gaining support as the anyone-but-Rob Ford candidate. The poll earlier this week showed it, Rocco Rossi’s departure showed it, and now the latest news is that the Smitherman camp is getting the endorsement of Adam Vaughan, councillor for Ward 20 and one of Ford’s most prominent opponents on council.
And then there were three: after one last terrible, horrible, no good, very bad poll, Rocco Rossi drops out of the race
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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.
Boardwalk Pub owner pulls the trigger, sues Ford for libel
The battle for the Beach is heating up. It all started back when the city extended Tuggs Inc.’s monopoly on selling food and drinks on the eastern Woodbine Beach, and has since become a symbol (for Rob Ford, among others) of everything that’s wrong at city hall. Ford has used some pretty harsh language regarding the deal, including the words “civic corruption,” which finally got the owner of the pub, George Foulidis, to threaten Ford with a defamation suit if he didn’t retract his allegations and apologize. Shocking everyone nobody, Ford has refused to retract his statement or apologize, and so Foulidis has pulled the trigger and filed a lawsuit against Ford.
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Rob Ford plagued by drive-by smears again
It’s hard out here for a front-runner: Rob Ford, having swatted down anonymous Web ads two weeks ago that referred to him as “arrested and jailed,” now faces another anonymous attack, this time in the form of lawn signs planted on University Avenue a few blocks south of Queen’s Park. The Toronto Sun reports:
Around 10 signs that read, “Wife-beating, racist drunk for mayor!” were planted in the University Ave. flowerbeds near Dundas St. W. at some point overnight….
It isn’t clear who is responsible for the signs. Erika Mozes, George Smitherman’s campaign spokesman, was adamant that Ford’s main rival had nothing to do with them.
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George Smitherman proposes expert council to reform city; existing city council apparently unqualified
Yesterday, while racking up the endorsement of former mayor John Sewell, George Smitherman unveiled his latest idea for reforming city hall: a group of seven experts that could iron out all the kinks in the whole amalgamation thing, 13 years after the fact. The panel will include a number of local notables, including former chief city planner Paul Bedford and developer Stephen Diamond.
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Pro-Leafs road closures on Yonge Street: Ford campaign politely silent
Toronto brakes for hockey (Image: Gary J. Wood)
Planning on travelling down Yonge Street tonight? Don’t bother. In celebration of the Maple Leafs home opener, Yonge will be closed between Gerrard and Richmond. As Toronto gets ready to celebrate the beginning of another probably-losing season by closing down a major thoroughfare, we have to wonder: what does Rob Ford—famously against shutting down streets for sporting events—think about this? (We’re not alone.)
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