Be afraid, David Miller, be very afraid.
Even before this summer's messy strike, it was clear that the second-term mayor was vulnerable to being bumped off in next year's civic election. The only question was whether a credible opponent would come forward to take him on.
Well, we appear to have the answer. Ontario Deputy Premier George Smitherman reversed months of denials Tuesday and confirmed that he was considering a run for the job Mr. Miller has held since 2003.
Furious George, as the combative Mr. Smitherman is sometimes called at Queen's Park, is a tough, seasoned, smooth-talking political heavyweight, streets ahead of the second stringers on city council who hanker for the mayoralty.
In a field where name recognition is critical, he is a headline-grabbing, oxygen-sucking Big Dog, the noisiest mutt in the pound. Ambition radiates off him like heat from a wood stove.
He has been a prominent MPP since 1999, when he became Ontario's first openly gay legislator and first openly gay cabinet minister. He has headed the high-profile, big-money Health ministry and, since last year, the powerful ministry of Energy and Infrastructure.
He has roots in the city, representing the diverse downtown riding of Toronto Centre. He has a history in city politics as campaign manager and chief of staff to former mayor Barbara Hall.
In short, he is just the sort of candidate who could the rip the chain of office from around Mr. Miller's neck like a run-by thief when Toronto votes in November 2010.
Mr. Smitherman has not said for sure whether he will challenge the mayor. That decision, he says, will not come till the new year. But this is much more than a toe in the water. It's an almighty splash in the stagnant little puddle of Toronto politics.
“I think there is a bit of a consensus forming in the city that the status quo is not getting the job done,” he said Tuesday, trying out a campaign line. A deputy premier of Ontario doesn't make that kind of dig about the mayor of the province's capital city if he is expecting to stay in his current job.
“People, certainly, have been pretty encouraging,” he said, “and as a life-long Torontonian that is kind of a flattering thing.”
What must be even more encouraging is the growing odour of carrion coming from Mr. Miller's office. A new Global News poll shows that 79 per cent of Torontonians want someone else chosen as mayor in the next election. The mayor's approval rating stands at just 29 per cent. The pollster, John Wright of Ipsos-Reid, said he has never seen such bad numbers in 20 years of Toronto polling.
The poll was taken two weeks after this summer's 39-day strike by city workers, and Mr. Miller insists it merely reflects the sour feelings of the time. “It was a tough summer,” he told reporters.
But the strike did much more than bring on a vague, fleeting unhappiness among Torontonians. It aggravated a feeling that the city is adrift, its financial affairs in disorder, its unions far too powerful for the city's good, its mayor too concerned about green roofs and bike paths to worry about fixing the pot holes.
In proclaiming his interest in the mayor's job, Mr. Smitherman is seeking to exploit that growing discontent, striking while Mr. Miller's strike wound is still fresh. In fact the deputy premier started making his move while the strike was still on, helping organize a “grassroots movement” to keep city streets clean in the absence of garbage collectors.
When reporters asked him then whether he was primping for a run against Mr. Miller, he brushed them off. “I've said no to that every way that I thought was sensible to do so,” he said in July.
Now he's saying a definite maybe. One reason may be tensions with his Liberal colleagues. Mr. Smitherman is rumoured to have been unhappy when Finance Minister Dwight Duncan took charge of a house-cleaning at the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp., which was under Mr. Smitherman's aegis.
Or he may simply feel he has gone as high as he can in provincial politics. Premier Dalton McGuinty is still just 54 and has won two majority governments, so Mr. Smitherman might have to wait a while before getting a crack at the top job.
There is another possible explanation for Mr. Smitherman's early move on the mayoralty: to head off the other man often mentioned as a 2010 rival for Mr. Miller, former Ontario Conservative leader John Tory.
It would be a disaster for both men to run, splitting the anti-Miller vote. Mr. Tory said Tuesday that he has made no deal with Mr. Smitherman to step aside. He will make his own decision in his own time “based on two major considerations, my family and my city.”
But if he joins the race now, after Mr. Smitherman has expressed an interest, he risks coming across as a spoiler.
From a strictly ideological point of view, Mr. Tory is the better candidate. As a conservative, he could attack the left-leaning Mr. Miller from his exposed flank. That will be harder for Mr. Smitherman, both a small-l and big-L liberal.
No matter who carries the anti-Miller banner, the mayor faces a tough climb to win back the city's confidence and get elected for a third time next year.
