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Toronto municipal election 2010
September 27, 2009 - 1:33pm
Let's have a consolidated thread specifically to talk about the mayoral and council races in Toronto a year from.
Watch for two possible open seats in left-leaning ridings. I think Howard Moscoe and Joe Pantalone may follow Miller's lead and call it a day.
I don't think it would have anything to do with "following Miller's lead", these are both men who have been on council for 25 years or more and may want to retire - regardless of what Miller would do.
There are also rumours that Case Ootes will retire and that Marrilyn Churley will run for his seat - and she would be pretty unbeatable.
There is also talk about Michael Walker retiring and Sue Ann Levy running for that seat.
Well, they also both held key committee assignments under Miller's administrations and would likely be relegated to the margins if a centre right candidate wins the mayoralty. But yes, age and years of service will likely factor into their decisions, too. Speaking of which, look for possible open seats if Feldman and Cho step down. A left leaning candidate in Cho's riding might have something more than a snowball's chance.
Ootes seat is probably the left's best chance of a pick up. Is Churley genuinely interested in running? What about his opponent in the 2006 election, Diane can't recall the last name -- who came within an inch of beating him?
I read somewhere that Diane Alexopoulos who lost to Ootes by 20 votes last time is barred from running again because she missed some deadline for getting in some paperwork about her spending on the last campaign. Whether Ootes runs again or not, Churley will be a shoe-in for that seat. I assume there will be other seats where progressives could pick up. I wonder if Alejandra Brava will run again against Palacio in Davenport? If Michael Walker quits, you can be sure that Sue Anne Levy would face stiff opposition from someone a bit more shall we say small "l" liberal. If Karen Stintz quite to run for mayor - her ward could easily go to someone more small "l" liberal. I expect that the NDP/progressive forces will take aim at Saundercook in Miller's old ward as well.
I think that if John Tory became mayor, he would probably try to co-opt some people from the left in much the same way that Lastman did and would give people like Giambrone, Pantalone, Bussin etc...just enough power to keep them on the inside pissing out rather than on the outside pissing in. Smitherman on the other hand is such a hyper-partisan Liberal that I think if he were mayor - it would all be very simple anyone who is a card-carrying Liberal who backed him for mayor will get a piece of the action - anyone else will be hung out to dry. That's his style.
She has a good chance of taking it I think.
Maybe Julian Heller could run municipally as well - he is a ratepayer activist in South Eglinton and his focus seems to be very much on local quality of life issues. Josh Matlow could also decide to run there.
I don't know if "easily" is quite the word. Ward 16 went for John Tory in '03 and it includes a lot of "nouveau riche" types.
Saundercook doesn't seem all that unbeatable.
Didn't Moscoe already make some kind of "last term" announcement after his last reelection? If such is the case, I can see his ward as the most likely pickup by the right.
That certainly is his style, but he won't be able to get away with it on City Council: there aren't enough (and won't likely be enough) card carrying Liberals to round out his Executive Committee. He'll have to make some accomodation with both the left and right to govern effectively (the left will prove challenging as my undestanding is that the NDP faction at city hall hates his guts).
This does raise the issue as to whether or not Smitherman has the requisite skill set to be mayor -- levels of diplomacy, consensus building and outreach that he has not shown to date.
Former Winnipeg Mayor Glen Murray might want to be Mayor of Toronto.
I had thought the "left" would be better off focusing on individual ward races rather than backing a candidate. However, if the election for mayor turns out to be a very fluid, free-for-all 2003 type situation, where John Nunziata and Tom Jackobek drew enough right wing votes to deny victory to John Tory, then there may be some hope for a progressive-type or NDP candidate after all.
Nunziata, yes. Jakobek, very debatable--he polled somewhere in the brushing-on-fringe-level LeDrew zone (and indeed was outpolled by fringers in a surprising number of wards)
Nunziata took 5% of the vote and most of it was from his own ward where people knew him - if he hadn't been running a chunk of those people would have voted for Miller.
Jackobek did garner over 5,000 votes, which would have otherwise gone to a right-wing candidate (presumably Tory).
Not sure if a good chunk of Nunziata's votes would have defaulted to Miller. Nunziata ran a pretty reactionary 'law and order' anti-crime campaign with the usual neocon boilerplate of lower taxes and contracted out services tacked on. If his supporters saw Miller as a substitute for implementng his platform, they weren't paying much attention to the candidates.
My point is that a crowded field of centre-right candidates can work to the benefit of a left-leaning progressive candidate. And it is starting to get crowded on the centre-right. It remains to be seen who will actually stick around for the long haul, but here's the current list of people who had either expressed an intent to run or were being touted as potential candidates.
John Tory, George Smitherman, Denzil Minnan Wong, Karen Stintz, Giorgio Mammoliti (?!), Michael Thompson, Glen Murray
Plenty of breathing room for a left leaning candidate, who, with a bit of luck, might just sneak up the middle.
My point about Nunziata was that almost all his votes were from the ward that he lives in where he was federal MP. So it was all a "favourite son" vote. The neighbouring wards split pretty evenly between Miller and Tory. I would agree that someone in Scarborough or downtown Toronto who votes for Nunziata did so for ideoligical reasons, but he got a negligible number of votes outside his home turf - and the votes he got in York South-Weston (a riding that the NDP has won or come close in provincially) were mostly people voting for a local hero - they probably couldln't have even told you waht his policies were. Had he not been on the ballt, its highly debatable where those votes would have gone.
Well, this is ummm, interesting.
Toronto Council Speaker admits she posed as caller to radio show
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/toronto-council-speaker-admits-she-posed-as-caller-to-radio-show/article1306898/
Just posted to Sandra Bussin's Facebook page:
Feh...in the end who cares, the election is over a year away. If people can keep re-electing Rob Ford in a landslide after all his outrages, this outburst by Bussin - who is otherwise about 100 times better than Ford - will have no impact.
Bussin would have to commit a felony - and a major won at that - to lose re-election in her ward.
It does mean that she will be sent to the equivalent of standing committee assignment Siberia under a John Tory administration, but that would likely have happened anyway.
Maybe Tom Jakobek can try for a political comeback
Josh Matlow is running for Councillor in the St. Paul's ward curently held by the (possibly retiring) Michael Walker.
Be an interesting race if Sue Ann Levy decides to contest it as well.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/matlow-announces-2010-council-bid/article1314816
/
I hear rumours of Adam Giambrone running for Mayor.
The only winnable mayoral candidate from the centre-left is Shelley Carroll. If Giambrone were to run (and i doubt he will) he'd just be giving up his council seat and about a million dollars for NOTHING.
BTW: It will be interesting to see to what extent Smitherman gets damaged by the whole e-health scandal since almost all the bad stuff happened when he was health minister.
Adam Vaughn expressed similar sentiments when asked why he wasn't running. His reply was something to the effect of "all that money and all that time, and for what? the same balance of seats on Council?"
I don't see the chances being good for anyone on the "Centre Left". Attitudes are hardening in Toronto against centre left client groups, such as public-sector unions. This political reality is what has likely discouraged David Miller to run again. The best the centre left can hope for is if the Right splits the vote.
The election is over a year away - and who knows what sentiments will be like by then. Public sector unions weren't exactly popular in 2003 either after another garbage strike etc... yet Miller won.
Of course its also not clear whether Smitherman as candidate becomes centre-left or centre-right - or if he runs at all in view of the e-health scandal.
The "right" may very well split the vote all over the place since without Miller, there is no longer any consensus that there has to be just ONE anti-Miller candidate.
Stockholm, so you don't think Giambrone can win? He is surprisingly good at what he does and has managed to impress quite a few people for a man so young. He is the only TTC chair to oversee the single largest expansion in transit in over a generation.
Then again running for mayor and loosing didn't hurt Jack
I agree with everything you say, but I just don't think that now is the right time for Giambrone. He is 32 but looks like he's 16 - in a few more years he might start to develop some more "gravitas". I just don't think that right now after 7 years of Miller, Toronto is going to turn to another guy from downtown who is heavily identified with the NDP (ie: a former two term federal NDP President). However, Toronto MIGHT be willing to turn to a card carrying Liberal from suburban Don Mills who happens to have a voting record that is 100% identical to Giambrone's.
It only makes sense for Giambrone to run if he wants to get away from city council and run provincially or federally and he figures that running for mayor, putting on a good campaign, exceeding expectations and losing is a good way to gain some name recognition and then run for higher office.
That strategy worked for Layton and also for John Tory!
I think the centre-left Liberal Matlow would be an improvement over the right-leaning independent NIMBY Walker.
Matlow vs Walker could be an interesting race. I am also watching the Vaughan races after the Toronto Star stories on their election participation committee as well the Toronto Life story
In the case of Vaughan, I think the only solution may be for all the incumbents to resign!