Rocco Rossi has dropped out of Toronto's mayoral race, conceding his ideas are failing to gain traction in a mayoral campaign that’s become a battle between two candidates tussling over an angry, polarized electorate.
“Despite my efforts to focus this race around issues and ideas that I feel matter, it has become clear that the majority of Torontonians have parked their support with one of two candidates: Mr. Smitherman or Mr. Ford,” he said at his campaign headquarters on Avenue Road Wednesday night. The announcement comes hours after an Ipsos-Reid poll placed him at 4 per cent – far behind frontrunners Rob Ford and George Smitherman, who appear to be in a dead heat.
“In essence, the choice for mayor is coming down to those who want to stop what Mr. Ford describes as the gravy train and those who want to stop Mr. Ford.”
Mr. Rossi said he isn't endorsing anyone, and called on Toronto voters to take a good, hard look at the two men now in the home stretch in their marathon to the mayor's chair -- and force them to answer tough questions about what they'd do as mayor, rather than scare people about what their opponent might do.
“I didn't enter this race intending to cut any deal, and I'll leave it the same way,” he said, choking up slightly. Several members of the campaign team grew teary-eyed during his statement. “I thank every one of you who took the time to tell me how you want the city to change.”
For 10 months, Mr. Rossi ran a campaign branding himself as an outsider in a race populated by “career politicians” out to “bribe voters with their own money.”
He resisted repeated calls to pull out of the campaign after polling for months in the single digits. He chalked his lack of voter support in the polls to a lack of name recognition.
After former fifth-place rival Sarah Thomson dropped out to throw her support behind Mr. Smitherman, Mr. Rossi said he wasn't worried about the pressure to withdraw himself – “I exert pressure,” he said at the time.
The final decision came down to an agonizing several hours of deliberation after the campaign team got a "sneak peak" at Wednesday's Ipsos-Reid poll late Tuesday night, said campaign manager Bernie Morton.
Mr. Rossi consulted multiple strategists, including a 20-person advisory team, and had some "quiet time" with his wife, Mr. Morton said, before coming to a conclusion.
There was near unanimity, save for one person who suggested waiting for upcoming polls that might have brighter outlooks for Mr. Rossi's campaign.
"He said 'No,'" Mr. Morton said. "What he didn't want to do was distract from what the campaign is leaning towards, which is a showdown between two different candidates about something he didn't really want to engage in that dialogue, something anti-someone or, in Mr. Smitherman's case, people holding their nose and say, 'We're going to support you because we don't like the other guy.'
"By 6 I think he knew he was going to be releasing his team. By 6:30 I think he had made his decision."
In many ways, Mr. Rossi suffered from being in a “Ford versus not-Ford” race where he was neither Mr. Ford nor the candidate voters perceived to be the anti-Rob Ford.
Mr. Rossi has repeatedly resisted calls for him to drop out of the race, arguing that as an underdog candidate with little name recognition his sensible policies have momentum among voters.
Those calls came most recently from people who had thrown their support behind Mr. Rossi previously: Writer and journalist Peter C. Newman, who had endorsed Mr. Rossi publicly earlier this year, issued an open letter endorsing Mr. Smitherman as the candidate most likely to beat Mr. Ford – and called on Mr. Rossi to withdraw.
