Back in late June, I sat in the office of John Laschinger, the professional political animal who manages David Miller’s election campaigns. On his wall was a framed copy of a poster from the 2003 campaign that’s widely considered a stroke of genius. It’s a picture of Miller, tall and smiling, with the slogan “Looks like a mayor. Thinks like a mayor. Talks like a neighbour.” Laschinger, too, talks like a neighbour, and looks like one: a roly-poly man with a bald pate ringed by a horseshoe of short grey hair, he’s the guy who’s always in the yard barbecuing large cuts of meat.

He was forthright and relaxed, feeling bullish about his candidate’s chances. “Miller doesn’t embarrass people like the previous mayor did,” he told me as he rattled off a list of his man’s accomplishments and attributes. “People are still blown away that he takes the subway to work.” The percentage of poll respondents who say they have a “favourable” impression of him is 70, Laschinger explained, compared to 20 per cent with an “unfavourable” impression. The plus-50 gap, if you’re not familiar with the argot of backroom politics, is one whopper of a “favourability differential.” There will be at least 28 other names on the mayoral ballot, but let’s just say the competition—and whether it would include Dennis Mills or not—wasn’t keeping him up at night. He was even planning to recycle the same ads. Election laws forbid posters from appearing until October 19, but he fished them out from the teetering piles of file folders engulfing his desk: the same photo of Miller, this time with lines like “A nice guy. Even when the cameras aren’t rolling,” “His spin doctors just tell the truth” and, of course, “Same great mayor. Same great hair.” The strategy has a downside: it makes Miller look like a politician who doesn’t feel the need to have any new ideas. The ones from last time will do.

I asked if he’d found a defining issue for this campaign, something like the bridge to the Island airport, which had done so much to energize the electorate behind Miller in 2003. “Do I need another magic bullet?” Laschinger asked rhetorically. “No.” As our conversation meandered its way to the subject of how voters feel about the city’s future, he touched on a number of issues—safety, the economy, green initiatives—then admitted, laconically, “There is something bigger out there, but it’s not focused.”

Something looms on the horizon, a threat lurks in the city’s future, but Laschinger doesn’t seem inclined to acknowledge it—presumably for fear that the mysterious issue, once articulated, would work against his candidate. At an informal summer rally, the mayor himself hinted at what it might be. He recalled how Montreal during Expo 67 was brimming with energy and optimism, only to lose its way and fall into decades of unfulfilled promise.

Being a world-class city has become a nasty, cutthroat endeavour. In the global economy, money and people flow freely across borders; cities compete fiercely for industry, financial might, brainpower and cultural capital. Toronto risks becoming—like Montreal—a lesser city. The danger signs have been here for over a decade: though the GTA’s economy has been growing, the city of Toronto proper has actually lost 100,000 jobs in the past 15 years.

“We have to be vigilant about the risks,” Miller said at that rally. Then he quickly retreated, as if realizing he shouldn’t be talking about such things, and moved on to sunnier matters. His team knows the score: as long as he doesn’t succumb to male pattern baldness before November 13, his campaign can run on autopilot.