Another Toronto municipal election thread

  This is an outsider's perspective (I live in Kingston) but I would guess that Tory saw that his campaign manager (?) from 2003, Rocco Rossi, is running and decided that Rossi would draw from much the same voting block that Tory did. That plus Smitherman (who is arguably someone who could draw votes from both the centre-right and centre-left) running made the race a lot more difficult for Tory. Just a guess

First poll on the mayoralty race is out!

The big issue now? Sleepy transit employees!

What a dismal field this is turning out to be. Adam Giambrone is in, which might be nice were it not for the less than stellar results of the TTC the last few years. At least he's never let a billion dollars go out the door for nothing like George Smitherman. Joe Pantalone is still Joe Who to most Torontonians after decades on council which doesn't speak well for his potential mayor. Rocco Rossi, of course, is just out of his mind. I wonder if David Miller hadn't stuck around he wouldn't have won re-election depite his difficulties.

Stockholm wrote:

Giambrone has got to have some sort of secret death wish to be running in this environment. His biggest claim to fame is being chair of the TTC at a time when everyone hates the TTC. I've said it before and i'll say it again - all that is going to happen is that $2 million will have to get sucked in to finance a hopeless demolition derby of a campaign - money that would otherwise go to progressive candidates for city council. All for what? so that he can get trounced, face unemployment, his seat on council will probably be captured by some big "L" Liberal Mario Silva acolyte, and on top of everything else there will be divisive battles between him and Pantalone for the support of New Democrats.

I hope I'm wrong, but I think this is a one way ticket to disaster.

The 2010 election has a lot of similarties to the 2003 campaign. In that election an unpopular incumbent chose not to run for reelection. While a centrist dominated the aerly polls, most of the incumbent's workers and base went to an ideologically similar candidate who had headed a generally despised service organization. That candidate came within a few points of winning.

In that election it was Lastman who was retiring and Tory who was the annointed successor on the right. Tory was most recently at Rogers, a phone and cable company that has a far worse public reputation than the TTC. If Tory could come within a few points of winning, I see no reason Giambrone can't at least do the same. In Rossi and Smitherman, Giambrone also faces far weaker opposition than Tory faced in Hall and Milller.

I think him running is a very shrewd career move for him.

If he stays on council, here are the outcomes (in my mind):

a) a Smitherman-esque mayor is elected, it's not particularly likely that he'll be kept in a position of prominence.  Consider it a half-step back.

b) a true right-winger is elected as Mayor, he'll definitely have no prominent role.  Without a true party-based opposition on council, he'll be jockeying for clout/attention/press with a number of other councillors, many who are perennial critics that really aren't seen as credible by the vast majority of Torontonians (plus, few people pay attention to municipal politics anyway.)  total step back.

He runs for mayor:

a) he actually wins and ends up mayor.  I think it's unlikely myself, but considering this field, it plays to him (I agree with SimonP on that.)  Smitherman is the biggest name in the race, but not as big a name as he and his supporters thinks he is. Rossi is a wild card, he could be a force to be reckoned with, or he could be John Nunziata.  Mammolitti (sp?) will be an also ran that siphons off Rossi votes.  I've always liked Pantalone, but really, who is gonna vote for him in large numbers?  And of those people, are they really the type that would have voted for Giambrone anyway?  Probably not.

b)  he loses.  (The most likely outcome to me.  I could see him coming in second or third.)  He's built city-wide momentum, recognition, prominence beyond what a councillor could do in a term.  He's a year or so away from a provincial election, which gives him time to organize an election campaign well in-advance of Oct 2011 and run for MPP.  If he wins, he's got way more influence and authority than he would have as councillor.  (If he loses, he's back at zero, but still has significant recognition.)

I don't know....I think my inclination is to sit on my hands until October and then support whichever of Pantalone or Giambrone is still in the race and/or clearly the stronger progressive candidate. I'm very concerned about how much a train wreck this years municipal elections promise to be. We are stuck with not one but TWO NDP councillors running for mayor each of whom is (for very different reasons) totally unelectable. Meanwhile we will have not one but TWO people on the left each trying to raise the $2 million it will take to run a serious campaign and with fratricidal conflict as they each fight over the support of NDP members and unions etc...

In the end all we're going to get are two council seats currently held by New Democrats being lost, as much as $4 million being flushed down the toilet by these hopeless mayoral campaigns - and a lot of bad feelings from people on the left being being fought over by Giambrone and Pantalone.

I wish someone would present me with a scenario for the municipal elections this fall that don't involve total catastrophe.

My comment about New Democrats in Trinity-Spadina being conflicted about Giambrone vs. Pantalone is simply that Joe Pantalone has been a city councillor for the western half of Trinity-Spadina for the 25 years, he ran provincially for the NDP in '87 and the people who work on his municipal campaigns are the same people who work for Rosario Marchese and Olivia Chow. Now even Jack Layton and Olivia Chow are forced to be 100% neutral for the entire mayoral campaign. How do you support? The loyal New Democrat who was with you on city council for 25 years and whose ward is one half of Trinity-Spadina or do you support another loyal New Democrat who just served as President of the federal NDP for two terms. The only solution is to sit on your hands.

Is transit going to be the wedge issue of the next municipal election?

Christopher Hume, speaking of Rocko Rossi:

Quote:

Launching his campaign last week, the former national director of the Liberal Party of Canada unveiled a platform that amounts to nothing less than a full frontal assault on Toronto's transit status quo.

Quote:

Rossi has more "Yonge/Bayview Corridor" cred I think.

As a denizen of said corridor, I resent that remark.

There's a webpoll up on the mayor's race at http://www.680news.com/

I am very interested to see which (if any) current councillors attend Giambrone's launch party. I will then compare that count to the substantial number of councillors who originally supported David Miller in 2003.  That count was a telling sign of the eventual outcome, even though Miller was polling very low when he launched. City Council is a parliament with little to no party discipline where one can only get results by working councillors one by one. Newbies (especially well-known bullies like George Smitherman) will be at a loss to succeed in that environment.

That webpoll was depressing - Rocco Rossi comes out way in front.

I cast my vote for "someone else."

I don't see the point of paying attention to unscientific online polls given their self-selected pool of respondents. Nor do I pay much attention to the poll Rob Ford bought that shows he's in third place:)

Mammoliti didn't "move to the right". He was elected by accident in the 1990 sweep and proved to be both incredibly stupid and a major-league bigot. The only good thing about him running for Mayor is that someone else can win his seat on Council.

Adam Giambrone has room to grow. Unless there is a credible right-winger in the race, Smitherman will have clear sailing. Maybe there will be an equivalent right-wing posse of Rossi, Ford, Mammollitti et al.  That might help.  I have no hope that Pantalone will help out by withdrawing. It took Joe three times running (sabotoging fellow left-wingers each time) to get himself elected and he shows no sign of having elevated his concern for the common leftist good since that time.

adma wrote:

Though in Ford's case, we're not talking about LeDrew-type "fringe-y"; more like a Toronto version of, say, Jim Pankiw--if he ran, he'd have a substantial enough bottom-feeding populist-teabag mandate, I'm supposing.

Ford has to go some to beat Pankiw. Ford's a penny-pinching clown, but Pankiw is a nasty piece of work who needs help.

Giambrone has a history of making audacious and what generally appeared to be extremely premature runs for office - whether it's running for the presidency of the NDP at 24 or running for city council, and pulling it off (though it took two tries before he was elected to council - at 25) so it would be foolish to write off his mayoral run - and despite an inauspicious beginning he does have time. The YouTube video was not a brilliant move but it does appear that he's been sandbagged to some degree over the TTC by a combination of bad luck and the media piling on (Smitherman attacking Giambrone the day he announced - when other politicians would have let him "have his day" was a clever move but if Smitherman continued to re-enforce his bulldog reputation he could end up hurting himself).

Smitherman's made a deal with Ralph Lean to bring in the same disastrous policy of Public-Private Partnerships that the McGuinty government has employed in public works projects - a policy that actually makes it more expensive to build public works and allows the private sector to pocket a very handsome profit with minimal risk. Giambrone needs to go after Smitherman on this - taking for example the disaster that P3s (called PFI in the UK) have been for British Rail and the London Underground, for instance, not to mention the P3 fiasco in Smiterman's Ministry of Health under his watch. And by all means go after Smitherman for the E-Health scandal.

Long term musing: Ford goes for mayor. Ford loses. Ford becomes the next CPC candidate in Etobicoke Lakeshore.

Is it so impossible?

Yup. But would be typical of the delusion that Ford operates under, that he would somehow triumph, and that the MSM (and the facts) just get in his way.