Toronto mayoral candidate Rocco Rossi meets with the The Globe and Mail's editorial board on Oct 4, 2010.Moe Doiron/The Globe and Mail
For those of us who cover politics, one of the challenges is getting much sense of how the politicians we're covering come across to people who don't see them on a day-to-day basis. It's easy to forget that we've had way more opportunity than most to develop our impressions, and that others' will be based on much less access and information.
So I've found it interesting, this fall, to follow Toronto's municipal race more as an outsider than as someone covering it. Granted, the fact that I write about provincial politics - which features some of the same players, not least the former deputy premier running for mayor - means I still don't quite have a typical viewpoint. But I haven't been very far inside the bubble.
That being the case, I can't help but notice the difference between what my media friends and colleagues covering the campaign are seeing, and what everyone else is seeing. And nothing better embodies that difference than the unsuccessful campaign of Rocco Rossi, who dropped out of the mayoral race last night after a poll showed him at just 4 per cent.
The general tone of coverage, when it comes to Rossi's fate, is one of slight confusion. Having watched him closely, journalists covering the campaign know that he's smart and likeable, and that he had a bunch of reasonably serious policies that fit into a reasonably serious economic platform. He did many of the day-to-day things right, making positive impressions on people who met him. So why didn't he get any traction?
The answer, I suspect, is that most people following the race casually didn't see much of that. What they saw was a guy they'd never previously heard of getting attention mostly for (a) raising the possibility of a ridiculous giant tunnel running under their city and (b) putting out a bunch of embarrassing ads that were so over-the-top in playing on Italian stereotypes, they would have made East Side Mario blush.
Rossi did get some attention early on for opposing bike lanes - an issue that had resonance with some voters, albeit ones who were probably more inclined to vote for Rob Ford anyway. But mostly, when he managed to break out of the municipal politics bubble, it was with stunts that made him look like a joke candidate.
In fairness to Rossi, I'm not totally sure what his other options were, other than to try to build his profile before he asked Torontonians to elect him mayor. And I'm very sympathetic to journalists' frustration in trying to get the electorate to pay close attention to what you're covering - after all, I write about provincial politics.
Still, I don't see much mystery in Rossi's flop. Though ironically, if I'd been keeping closer tabs on him, I'd probably be more confused.
Adam Radwanski