After that, the campaign put Mr. Ford in a box. They avoided substantial media and debates as much as possible, a strategy that will be impossible to replicate when Mr. Ford takes office, but which worked perfectly on the trail. Nothing could stop them.
A mayor, however, doesn't stay Teflon for long. And although Mr. Kouvalis has been named chief-of-staff, he can't be expected to babysit Mr. Ford every day for the next four years, watching his every phone call, as he learned to do on the hustings. Mr. Ford will have to learn to be his own censor, his own superego.
Pulling into ‘gravy' station
On election night, Mr. Ford looked stunned by the speed and size of his win. He rose from his mother's basement couch to kiss his wife, Renata, who, like the couple's young son and daughter, was making her campaign debut at its denouement.
Turning to the reporters in attendance, he fell back on comfortable platitudes: “The people are really fed up with the wasteful spending and I want to thank them for their vote of confidence, and I just cannot wait to put an end to the gravy train.”
Now Mr. Ford has to demonstrate that he can move beyond rhetoric. His early choices suggest that, at the very least, he understands a strong mayor needs even stronger advisers – an improvement over outgoing mayor David Miller, often knocked for his need to be the smartest guy in the room.
Mr. Ford drafted Case Ootes, the respected dean of city-hall conservatives, to lead his transition team. He's already anointed Mr. Kouvalis chief of staff, a signal he's learned there are advantages to bending to a solid adviser's will.
As he rounds out his staff, he'll need to find a softer character to play good cop to Mr. Kouvalis's bad.
Mr. Ford also named his brother to his transition team, and is rumoured to be considering the councillor-elect for a senior post, more evidence of the influence the Ford clan could wield.
Four years from now, Mr. Ford will be judged on whether he governed as well as he campaigned.
His best qualities – a plainspoken manner, an obsession with customer service, an uncanny understanding of voters' desires – could whither in the cocoon of the mayor's office, or emerge again transformed.
His weaknesses are clear: Can a guy who's not great at either policy or public speaking be a great mayor? Can a man who's so naive he offers to buy drugs for a disturbed stranger exercise the judgment to lead the country's largest city?
Most of all, perhaps: Can a lone wolf play nice with the moderate councillors and the other levels of government whose support he'll need to pass his agenda?
One early move hints Mr. Ford might not be as divisive as feared, at least if his big brother has his way.
In a confusing scrum with reporters Wednesday, the mayor-elect backtracked on a controversial campaign pledge to phase out Toronto's streetcars.
The questions arose after Doug told a local newspaper that, “by no means are we going to get a crane and start yanking up streetcars and throwing them in the lake.”
The broken promise sounded like Doug going rogue again – but in this case, that might not be such a bad thing. Removing even one downtown streetcar would be a recipe for council civil war. If Doug, a city-hall rookie, is smart enough to know better, then the mayor-elect is already better off with his brother as consigliere.
So far, it looks like the disciplined Rob Ford who impressed on the campaign trail might actually stick around to govern.
The Globe’s Kelly Grant will be participating in a live chat about Rob Ford and his future as mayor at 2 p.m. ET Monday.
