2010 Election
March 15th, 2010
On the morning of the now-infamous $100 million press conference, a Metro Morning producer called me at 6:30 am and asked if I wanted to speculate on air about rumours that David Miller was either going to resign or jump in the race.
When Matt Galloway posed the question, I braved all and opined that the mayor was going to run, citing, as evidence, his recent screed in NOW Magazine.
Almost a week on, I am happy to report that I was largely correct.
No, he hasn’t registered, and no, he won’t be on the ballot. But Miller last week unambiguously inserted himself into the 2010 mayoral campaign (not to mention the work of the next council), thereby creating a strange and unseemly dynamic in a race that’s already looking fairly ugly. And he did so by choosing to position this piece of budget-related news in such a conspicuously political way.
Miller, of course, is looking to burnish up his record as the term winds down. And there’s little doubt that by trumpeting this in-year surplus as evidence of sound fiscal management, the mayor was taking yet another crack at pressuring Queen’s Park into a deal to cover half the TTC’s annual operating shortfall, which he’s taken to describing as “the provincial share.”
Yet by laying out part of a spending plan for the next term of council (including the false promise of a TTC fare freeze), Miller was directly challenging George Smitherman and Rocco Rossi, who’ve been outspoken in their critiques of the city’s financial problems and had no choice but to turn up at City Hall on Tuesday to respond with their own spin (”emotional turmoil,” “lamest of lame ducks,” etc.).
March 1st, 2010
From what I can glean, there are three competing explanations for what former Liberal health minister David Caplan was up to last week when he introduced a private member’s bill that would declare the TTC an essential service.
Let’s quickly dispense with the loose cannon version. Premier Dalton McGuinty has always run a tight ship, and it’s inconceivable that a member of his caucus could introduce a private member’s bill - especially one that addressed the jurisdiction of a senior minister - without a vetting process from the central command. Indeed, as a well-placed Liberal source assured me, “This was planned.”
What the move sought to accomplish, however, remains the subject of much speculation.
Theory A: A shot of electoral ginseng for George Smitherman.
After Caplan tabled the bill and transportation minister Kathleen Wynne declared it a non-starter, the premier said in the legislature that it’s an important issue for the mayoral race. Smitherman - who hasn’t been quick off the draw with anything so far in this race - had a statement of support all teed up and ready to go:
“I want to applaud David Caplan’s Private Members’ Bill as it reflects an appropriate source of concern about the cost of a TTC strike to the city and commuters - there can be no doubt that work stoppages cause a huge disruption. I look forward to the debate continuing in the Legislature - including a full committee hearing with public consultations. Based on the outcome of that debate, we can have a fulsome discussion about the options the city might have in the future.”
In other words, he’s marking territory among right-of-centre voters.
February 22nd, 2010
Yet another press release from the Rocco Rossi camp appeared in my inbox late Friday afternoon, declaring - or more accurately, re-declaring - his outrage at the Jarvis Street bike lane, which apparently got a regulatory green light last week.
Predicting that a Jarvis bike lane will “exasperate traffic congestion” (sic), Rossi decried the decision to press ahead with a project that has spent years in the approvals process as a “clear affront to democracy and the voters of Toronto.”
A less trigger-happy candidate would surely know better than to commit this kind of nonsense to print. Why? Think ahead to Mayor Rossi’s longer-than-expected do-to list circa spring, 2014, when he’s struggling to push through the remaining items on his five-point mandate.
By the logic of his Friday statement, future opponents will get to slap Rossi around for running roughshod over the voters’ intentions. So the spin begs a question: at what point in a mandate does the ruling party or leader lose the moral authority to act? (Answer: when the mandate ends.)
Rossi is apparently trying to make Jarvis Street into the island airport of the 2010 campaign. He’s magnifying a local planning decision into a symbol of what he alleges is wrong with David Miller’s city hall, just as Miller himself positioned the bridge as a symptom of the cronyism that pervaded Mel Lastman’s regime.
February 10th, 2010
At 11am today, Adam Giambrone held a press conference at which he profusely apologised to his supporters, to his personal partner, and to his fellow councillors for the recent revelations about his personal life and his mishandling of the response. Then he left the podium.
A few minutes later, his Executive Assistant, Kevin Beaulieu, returned to read the full statement in which Giambrone announced that he was withdrawing from the mayoralty race, but would remain as councillor for Ward 18 and Chair of the TTC. He says he wants to address the renaissance of the TTC and the building of Transit City.
Whether he actually gets to do this remains to be seen. The Commission will meet next week, and it is possible that a vote of non-confidence will end Giambrone’s role as Chair. His opponents may use this opportunity to tar much of what he and others in Mayor Miller’s camp have achieved with transit, and that would be a terrible mistake. Those changes, those policies exist not just because of Giambrone, but because many councillors, the mayor, Queen’s Park and countless members of the public recognize that transit in Toronto must improve. The chair may pass to another councillor, but the organization and the goals remain.
February 10th, 2010
Adam Giambrone is abandoning his campaign for mayor. His assistant, Kevin Beaulieu, informed the media of this decision after Giambrone suprised the assembled reporters by making no major announcements at the press conference he called this morning.
UPDATE: It appears that Giambrone intended to make the announcement himself, but was unable to finish delivering his prepared comments.
In his remarks, he apologized once again to his partner, Sarah McQuarrie, as well as to his colleagues on council and to the “young people who believed in me.” His statement lasted less than two minutes, and he took no questions.
Giambrone launched his mayoralty campaign at the beginning of the month. Yesterday, he admitted to having an “inappropriate relationship” with a woman named Kristen Lucas, and then apologized later in the day for having “intimate relations” with multiple women in the past year.
UPDATE: Here is Giambrone’s complete statement. The part in bold is what he failed to read aloud.
February 8th, 2010
It couldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that the city’s swinging right in this election year, and not without reason, given the increasingly perilous state of Toronto’s finances (the gory details of which will be getting a lot of airplay over the next week). But there’s something bizarre about the breast-beating over the alleged dearth of red-meat conservatives in the mayoral race.
Exhibit A: Marcus Gee’s plea in Saturday’s Globe and Mail for Rob Ford to jump into this “lefty” campaign. As a journalist, I whole-heartedly agree with him that the spectacle of a Ford candidacy would be enormously entertaining to cover.
But surely there’s more to this business of holding elections than simply the prospect of nine months of zingers. In our yearning for some blue blood, have we lost sight of that little matter of competence?
At the risk of inviting days of attack on the comment string, I’d argue that three current and former council conservatives certainly have the skills to run the city: Doug Holyday, Karen Stintz, and David Soknacki, former budget chief and currently chair of Parc Downsview Park. You may not agree with them on many points, but they all have functioning brains and understand the issues.
In lieu of these figures, we have Rocco Rossi, whose pronouncements to date make him look more and more like a conservative in Liberal clothing.
January 28th, 2010
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvzkjxSf9gg[/youtube]
Earlier this week, the local media jumped on the news that councillor Adam Giambrone is set to launch a mayoral bid after he sent out invitations to an event to “celebrate Toronto” on Monday, Feb. 1st.
Spacing just caught wind …
January 25th, 2010
For the TTC, it’s been a perfect storm. In under a month, we’ve seen the fare hike, Richard Soberman’s post mortem, Rocco Rossi’s call for a Transit City moratorium, The Napping Photo, and yesterday’s terrible accident involving a driver whose car was t-boned as it tried to make an illegal left across the St. Clair right-of-way.
To regular riders, of course, The Photo is merely a variation on the theme – in league with the guys on the phone, the guys obsessively re-counting the coin, the guys yakking with off-duty colleagues, etc.
More remarkable was Amalgamated Transit Union president Bob Kinnear’s admission, in Saturday’s Globe and Mail, that three-quarters of the collectors are “down there for medical reasons.” Since when did fare collection become the TTC’s de facto worker’s comp strategy? One would think that someone in Kinnear’s position would know enough to keep that nugget under lock and key.
TTC chair Adam Giambrone has ordered up a customer service review, led by outside private sector advisors. But isn’t this a case of slamming the barn door after the horse has bolted? It would have been much better if he’d made that move after he took over as chair in 2006, rather than waiting until the eve of the mayoral race. And he was certainly aware of the issues.
When I spoke to George Smitherman yesterday, he said such “horror stories” are “a symptom of a bigger problem,” which, in his view, is the need for tougher oversight and “executive leadership.” “The mayor must answer to the people of Toronto for the TTC’s performance.”
January 21st, 2010
In a lunchtime speech to the Empire Club at the Royal York today, mayoral hopeful Rocco Rossi laid out some of the key planks of his platform — promises that will likely set the tone and the dynamic of the race to come.
He vowed to cancel all future bike lanes on major arterial roads, including Jarvis Street, and complete the balance of the city’s cycling plan on residential or secondary streets. He also promised to review existing bike lanes on arterials.
As for Transit City, Rossi condemned the TTC and the city for allowing the St. Clair right-of-way to go over budget. “We can’t have another St. Clair fiasco.” He told reporters after the speech that if he’s elected, he will put all of the Transit City projects (except the Sheppard line, which is now under construction) on hold, pending a review of their projected capital and operating budget projects. Asked if he was calling for a moratorium, he initially replied, “On anything we can stop right now, yes.” Later, Rossi’s communications director Pat Best told reporters that he wants to put the projects “on hold.”
January 18th, 2010
The all-male city council of Toronto, 1952
Except for Mel Lastman’s essentially uncontested re-election in 2000 (with all due respect to Tooker Gomberg, RIP), it’s been almost a generation since Torontonians have witnessed a mayoral race that involved no competitive female candidates.
Which is just one of several reasons why Shelley Carroll’s decision not to run is such a let-down. Without her, the field of major contenders will likely settle out with five white males, all but one of whom are middle-aged.
Yes, we should celebrate the fact that an out gay man may become the mayor of Canada’s largest city. And the presence of several very different candidates of Italian ancestry attests to the distance Toronto has come from the 1950s, when the police would harass Italian immigrants for the crime of conversing on the sidewalk.
But the absence of mainstream women and/or visible minority candidates from the ballot is troubling, and underscores a trend identified by Dave Meslin at betterballots.to. I’d say this slate deserves at best a C+ for diversity.
There are all the usual ironies — Toronto’s ethnic composition, David Miller’s campaign to win the vote for immigrants and refugees — as well as some lesser ones, including a fairly determined recent campaign by the city and council’s women’s caucus to mentor young women interested in leadership and public life.
