Olivia Chow is brash as she marches her little squad of canvassers up Manning Avenue, pushing along the laggards and dispatching others across the street to intercept pedestrians, laughing and shaking eagerly proffered hands, acting for all the world as if she had already won the election.
But Tony Ianno is never brash. Bitter, yes. He openly resents the "media darling" image of his inveterate opponent, plus the fact that every time he bests her in a hard-fought federal campaign -- twice so far -- she gets more attention in defeat than he gets in victory. Never brash, never anticipating a break, Mr. Ianno is instead dogged, methodically sniffing out votes door to door with a worried, driven look on his face.
"I always work as if I'm behind," he says, refusing to predict or even intimate yet another victory over the downtown lefties in their very own lair -- Ianno country since 1993.
It worked last time, when the hustling Liberal took advantage of a last-minute surge in party fortunes to beat Ms. Chow by 805 votes. Assuming victory, the New Democrats had already moved workers out of the riding when Liberal attacks on Stephen Harper began eroding their vote, according to party sources. But Mr. Ianno sneered at that as just another excuse and relished his thin but decisive second victory over one-half of the glorious first couple of progressive politics.
This year, though, Ms. Chow brushes off the reappearance of the same Liberal attack ads, comparing Conservative Leader Stephen Harper to bogeyman Mike Harris, which allegedly did such damage to her vote in round two of this never-ending electoral slugfest.
"Are they getting that desperate?" she asks, airily dismissing any thought that the Liberals can still unite the left with the spectre of a Harper government. "This is two weeks before election day. People are going to see through it." This time, she boasts, former Liberal speechwriters and organizers are volunteering on her campaign. The new condominium buildings that supported Mr. Ianno in 2004 are now going her way. "I know because I've been canvassing them," she said. "I can tell. People are tired of Liberals."
Supporting evidence for that contention comes from Mr. Ianno's recent, waffling attempt to conciliate opponents of the federally subsidized and Liberal-choked Toronto Port Authority. Kowtowing to a well-organized lynch mob of waterfront activists, Mr. Ianno declared that he was against expansion of the island airport and willing to "work with you" to reform the TPA, a body both he and his government supported steadfastly until then.
"I never changed my position," he now says. But it still takes a lot of explaining.
Door to door, Mr. Ianno promotes his record of delivering support for local institutions and reports "a very receptive" audience. "It's not the same as the last time, it's more positive," he claims. "But that doesn't mean I'm going to win. I don't go on that basis."
Ms. Chow is not so reticent -- and this time she is leaving no door unknocked in her quest for a seat next to husband Jack Layton in the House of Commons. The NDP now has its own track record to flaunt. Although short, it has been far more generous to local institutions than anything Mr. Ianno and his colleagues delivered over the past decade or so. The party also has the advantage of several thousand voting students living in Trinity-Spadina, the same ones whose absence it felt during the summer-vacation election of 2004.
With a high profile as the brainy-but-bubbly wife of a national leader, Ms. Chow remains the one Toronto candidate most likely to knock off a Liberal. And if she doesn't -- after failing twice before and since quitting her city council seat -- she's finished.
So there is an extra spring in her step these days.
"Are you suggesting that I don't have many lives left, politically?" she asks in response to a query about the potential of life unelected. No matter, she adds. "I don't intend to lose."
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