Toronto mayoral candidate George Smitherman heads back his motorhome he is using while campaigning.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Sometimes, in a horse race, what you really need is a motorhome.
Before sunrise Tuesday morning, George Smitherman and a three-person entourage set out in a Conquest RV on an urban odyssey across congested Toronto, with plans to make almost 40 pit-stops before the week's end.
The 28-foot vehicle, dubbed the "Smithervan" by one of the wags on the campaign team, is fitted out with a small flat screen TV, a fridge stocked with bottled water and Diet Coke, and three cramped cots, one of which was stacked with campaign signs. A pile of chips and granola bars sits enticingly on the counter. Another joker has slapped a "Gulfstream" sticker near the exit door. Otherwise, the van's brown and white exterior offered no clue that there was a peripatetic mayoral candidate inside.
Whistle-stop tours are standard fare in Toronto's post-amalgamation electoral marathons. But with less than three weeks to go and the advance polls now open, the tactical trick for the leading candidates is not only to campaign, but to be seen to be campaigning.
Rocco Rossi, always eager to project a robust image, has been biking Toronto's highways and byways. (As Mr. Smitherman quipped while his van lumbered up Bay Street, "I heard he was riding around on a tunnel-boring machine, but I'm not sure.") Team Ford, meanwhile, has also commandeered a motorhome similar in size to Mr. Smitherman's, but his brand-minded handlers decorated it with the Etobicoke councillor's red-white-and-blue waste-fighter slogans.
Mr. Smitherman - wearing a jet black suit, his trademark purple tie and spiffy cufflinks engraved with purple muscle cars - hit 10 wards Tuesday, including Etobicoke South, High Park/Parkdale, downtown, Davenport and Eglinton-Lawrence. He insisted the RV wasn't contributing to the city's much lamented congestion, noting he'd have had to bring two cars to ferry his team around.
Mr. Smitherman began the day with glad-handing stops at various west-end breakfast joints and swung by City Hall for a mid-morning photo-op with his new-found ally Sarah Thomson. The van then zipped up to Rosedale, where Mr. Smitherman spent an hour romancing a pair of Mr. Rossi's early supporters who, he insisted, are now thinking of switching teams.
En route, Mr. Smitherman was the very picture of the distracted, multitasking, wise-cracking pol. He furiously hammered out texts on his BlackBerry, ordered around his handlers and revealed his sardonic, and somewhat salty, sense of humour - a trait rarely in evidence at public events, where Mr. Smitherman is often voluble and occasionally lapses into a hectoring speaking style.
As the van headed to a session with the editorial board of a multi-ethnic newspaper publisher, he told the driver to make a quick detour to a men's clothing outlet so he could pick up a few more size 46 black suits for the trail.
All the while, Mr. Smitherman took a high-speed briefing from a campaign adviser on the other end of a phone line about the CBC Radio debate, scheduled for later in the evening. "Do you think Matt Galloway is going to let people talk over one another or is he going to be a Steve-Paikin-style moderator?" he asked.
The game plan, they agreed, is to nail Joe Pantalone for supporting former mayor Mel Lastman's tax freeze. "I'm going to use that tonight," he said.
After the hour-long editorial board session, Mr. Smitherman got back into the van and buckled in. "How did it go?" inquired communications director Stefan Baranski, who skipped the session to smooth out logistical loose ends.
"One guy," Mr. Smitherman replied, "was a real shill for Ford." He then began tapping out a thank-you text to the publisher, who had offered up her card.
As the Smithervan lumbers down Dufferin shortly after 4 p.m., his handlers worked out a contingency plan after learning Mr. Smitherman wouldn't be allowed to campaign inside Dufferin Mall, as they had hoped. Mr. Baranski said he tweeted the news that St. Paul's councillor Joe Mihevc has gone public with his endorsement of Mr. Smitherman.
What made Mr. Mihevc come around, Mr. Smitherman was asked.
The candidate offered a shrewd sidelong glance: "He's a sensible man."
At that point, the Smithervan pulled up to the corner of Dufferin and Bloor, where he was to meet with a small advance team offered up by long-time Liberal MPP Tony Ruprecht.
In lieu of the mall, with its large crowds, they had to settle for handing out brochures at a subway stop. Mr. Smitherman, who was ambushed earlier in the week by protests, looked appraisingly out the van's window at the advance team's handmade placards. Preparing to dive into the midst of the afternoon's way-home commute, he opened the rear door and turned to bark a command at his handlers.
"Who's got the materials?"
John Lorinc is Special to The Globe and Mail