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Is the glass half empty or half full?<\/p>\n
The election story line that is rapidly crystallizing into received wisdom is that our new garbageman-in-chief Rob Ford won a landslide protest vote fueled by taxpayer anger over senseless waste at City Hall. The winds of change are upon us. There\u2019s a new sheriff in town. The revolution will not be televised. Pick your clich\u00e9.<\/p>\n
I see a different result.<\/p>\n
With 100% of polls reporting, mayor-elect Ford garnered 383,501 votes. But 385,314 Torontonians chose to support either George Smitherman or Joe Pantalone. Read those numbers closely. That\u2019s 47.1% for the Etobicoke penny-pincher, and 47.3% against said Etobicoke penny pincher. He didn\u2019t win hand\u2019s down.<\/p>\n
Is this just sore-loser spin? Certainly, there\u2019s no question Smitherman lost by a longshot in the two-person race he desperately wanted this election to be.<\/p>\n
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But Torontonians, collectively, have expressed a different and more nuanced decision — one that suggests the apparent tidal wave of populist outrage may be a good deal less frothy than the result depicted in the mainstream media. After all, Mr. Ford\u2019s waste management message was nothing if not clear, and those who voted for either Pantalone or Smitherman were saying they don\u2019t buy it.<\/p>\n
Apart from the popular vote, the council results surely tell the tale. When Miller came into office, he brought a group of progressive\/reformist councillors along for the ride. By my count, the Ford revolt translated into just two new councillors, both in north-west Etobicoke — one of whom is his brother Doug.<\/p>\n
Both the right and the left lost some stalwarts, but the 15 newcomers on council could hardly be described as a turnkey operation for a hard-right mayor. Does he persuade a group with so many newbies — many of them centrists — to vote themselves out of jobs? No chance.<\/p>\n
Ford will succeed in quickly killing the vehicle registration tax. That\u2019s day one. But the open question on the first chapters of Ford\u2019s mayoralty is whether he decides to run as if he won a landslide. He\u2019ll discover soon enough that he didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n