There is an interesting dynamic at play in Toronto’s mayoral race, and it has manifested itself in a recent poll. Rob Ford’s brother Doug has now pulled neck-and-neck with the frontrunner, John Tory.
The two important people not in the race? Former Mayor David Miller and current Mayor Rob Ford. Why are they the most important people even though they are not running for office? Because many voters are basing their decision on getting (or avoiding) the next David Miller or next Rob Ford.
To people not from Toronto, Rob Ford needs no introduction. He excites all the right people in all the wrong ways, the same way that Sarah Palin does. By right people, I mean the white, liberal intelligentsia, who mostly live downtown. They Hate Rob Ford. While their ideal candidate in this election is, or would be, Olivia Chow - an extreme-left former Toronto City councillor who represented a downtown ward - their number one goal is not re-electing Rob Ford. But now that Rob Ford has stepped down because of cancer, this translates into not electing his brother Doug. Because Olivia is stuck in the 20% range, they are flocking to front-runner John Tory as their second choice. My sometime guest-blogger, Mike Downtown, tells me of a number of urban trendies in his circle of acquaintance who plan on holding their nose and voting for Tory.
On the other hand, the people in the suburbs don’t fear the next Rob Ford so much as they fear the next David Miller. While he didn’t make a spectacle of himself on the Jimmy Kimmel Show, Miller did incalculable damage to Toronto, specifically with tax hikes, insane traffic-snarling projects like the St Clair Streetcar Right-of-Way, and a complete screw-up of Toronto’s garbage collection system. To my American readers, the best American analog of David Miller is New York Mayor Bill de Blasio: he looks like a CEO, he talks like a CEO, but he’s really a Marxist.
When I first heard that Olivia Chow wanted to be mayor, I confess I was scared. I knew of her hard-left past of course, but I also was afraid that Torontonians of Chinese background might want to elect Toronto’s first Chinese mayor. In the last election, they - Toronto’s largest ethnic group by far - backed Rob Ford. (In Toronto, ethnic groups and immigrants live in the suburbs and tend to be center-right, at least municipally.) But it turns out, I didn’t have to worry. I wasn’t the only one afraid of the next David Miller. Seven years of Miller was enough and most people think Olivia Chow wants to be the next David Miller.
When Chow looked like a credible threat, mainstream voters flocked to Tory. To my American readers, the best analogue of John Tory is Mitt Romney, minus the business acumen: a bland, centrist cipher, who wants to be a political leader but lacks the touch. But now that Chow has tanked, many Fordanatics feel free to flock back to Rob Ford’s torch bearer, his brother. This is the reason, I think, for the recent uptick in Doug Ford’s support.
This is what I mean by interesting dynamic. There are three main candidates: Olivia Chow, John Tory, and Doug Ford. John Tory leads but excites no-one. In contrast, Olivia Chow and Doug Ford’s supporters are hard-core. Tory’s ranks are largely made up of people repelled by one of the other candidates, or more precisely, who one of the other candidates stands in for. As a result, Tory’s support is a mile wide but an inch deep, and this race is still in a profound state of flux.
Some time ago you speculated that if Tory entered the race, he would suck votes away from Rob Ford, the assumption being that Tory was an alternative conservative (at least to those people who were suckered into thinking Tory is a conservative). I speculated that Tory was just as likely to suck up Chow voters.
Now it looks as though Tory has completely removed Chow from the race to the point where there is now speculation that Chow may back out of the race and throw her support behind Tory. Of course this could just as soon backfire by convincing former Rob Ford supporters that Tory really is just another liberal.
Posted by: WiseGuy | October 08, 2014 at 08:48 PM