LORINC: Campaign Notes — Tory & Stintz are in & Doug Ford goes after Nick Kouvalis

Is “relief” the gravy metaphor for the 2014 race? Near the top of John Tory’s slickly designed website, it says the candidate “vows to build relief line.” On its face, Tory is talking about the much discussed U-shaped subway that is seen as a salvation to the crowding on the Yonge-University line.

But when I visited the site yesterday, I found myself mulling over the meaning of this interesting and complicated word “relief,” sitting as it does right there on the middle of Tory’s home page.

David Miller famously wielded a broom. Rob Ford pledged to commandeer that out-of-control gravy train. So will “relief” becomes the metaphorical leitmotif for Campaign 2014? After all, the word, in this context, conjures up not just a break from sardine can subway rides, but also a respite from the four-year-long tag-team mud-wrestling match starring the brothers Ford.

Perhaps Tory is promising not only transit relief; perhaps he’s subtly signaling voters that he’s going to administer some kind of civic bromo-selzer to the tummy politic. You know, to help get rid of all that built up gas…

The revenue tools debate accelerates from 0 to silly in under two minutes.

In her post-registration scrum, Karen Stintz told the assembled media horde that she plans to build new transit in Toronto without the use of revenue tools. She said she worked “successfully” with the province to get the money for the “extension of the Bloor-Danforth subway line” (no mention of Scarborough), and plans to take the same “opportunities and partnership” approach with the downtown relief line.

The Toronto Star’s Daniel Dale politely reminded her that council’s tax hike for the Scarborough subway was, in fact, a “revenue tool.” “Again,” Stintz replied, “if there was a municipal contribution, I know there are, ways to fund that portion of the downtown relief line without going to people and asking them to pay more.”

Revenue tools if necessary, but not necessarily revenue tools, or something like that.

Send in the lawyers. During Doug Ford’s scrum, which occurred between John Tory’s registration and Stintz’s, and featured the usual media-bashing, the soon-to-be-former councilor for Ward 2 dropped a tantalizing clue suggesting that the Ford campaign may come after their former campaign manager Nick Kouvalis. He said the campaign is trying to get its 2010 voter lists back from Kouvalis, but he’s refused to release the data. “So that’s going to be an issue,” said Ford.

If the mayor’s team goes after Kouvalis in court, we could see a reprise of the infamous Tom Jakobek-Barbara Hall court battle — an exercise in mutually-assured destruction that played out in the midst of the 2003 race.

A bit later in the scrum, when asked if he was concerned that Tory could out-fundraise the mayor, Ford also opined that Tory “would have one dinner, having all the establishment there, writing $2,500 cheques. Again, with Rob Ford, we raise $20 cheques, and John Tory could raise this money in one night.”

All those $20-donations, incidentally, helped Ford run up a $822,000 campaign deficit back in 2010 — a payable that was wiped out when one John Tory organized, um, one dinner, during which a lot of developers wrote those elusive $2,500 cheques to help the newly elected mayor out of the red.