In 2014, Olivia Chow ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Toronto. Her leading rivals were John Tory, a former leader of the provincial Progressives Conservatives, and Doug Ford, who stepped in to replace his ailing brother, Rob.
Late this week, with Ms. Chow on the brink of reaching the office that eluded her back then, both men saw fit to try to block her, barging into the campaign for mayor at the last minute to try to influence the outcome.
Mr. Ford put his oar in with the usual big splash. Just five days before Monday’s vote, he said he personally favoured former police chief Mark Saunders, who has portrayed himself as the only candidate who can “stop Chow.”
Mr. Ford said that Ms. Chow would be an “unmitigated disaster” as mayor. Taxes would soar, companies would flee. “People are terrified. Businesses are terrified.”
Mr. Tory, meanwhile, came out for his old city council ally Ana Bailão. Though he didn’t mention Ms. Chow, the front-runner, by name, he said that the city should not be ruled by party politics and could not afford to make life harder for job creators. That sounded a lot like a jab at Ms. Chow, the veteran NDPer.
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Both interventions were wildly offside. Mr. Ford had said he wasn’t backing anyone in the race, insisting he would co-operate with whichever candidate was elected.
Then a Mark Saunders sign appeared on the lawn of his house. Though he said it was not “up to me or anyone else to tell you who to vote for,” the Premier said he had a right to put up a sign and planned to vote for Mr. Saunders, who ran for Mr. Ford’s PCs in last year’s election.
Now Mr. Ford says a vote for Ms. Chow would lead Toronto into wrack and ruin. He wouldn’t want to tell anyone how to vote – goodness, no, not him. He only wants to remind us that Ms. Chow would be terrible and Mr. Saunders would be great. Just one man’s opinion. By the end of the week he was sending out robo-calls promoting his preferred candidate.
So much for staying out of the race. Mr. Tory had also said he was staying out. After resigning this winter over an affair with a staffer, he managed to remain more or less silent, which must have been a struggle for a man of so many words.
Asked earlier this month whether he planned to endorse a candidate, he told The Globe and Mail, “I have no plans to be involved at all.” He was merely “watching” the campaign from the sidelines.
Now, at the 11th hour, he pipes up. He, too, did it in characteristic fashion, releasing what one news outlet described as a “lengthy” statement on why Ms. Bailão was the right woman for the job. For good measure, he read the statement aloud and posted the video. He sent out a robo-call, too.
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What either man hopes to achieve by intervening so late in the game is hard to imagine. Mr. Tory has done Ms. Bailão no favour by portraying her as a kind of Mini-Him. Her candidacy may already have suffered from the perception that she is a Tory loyalist, no great asset in the eyes of those who think the city is in trouble and needs to change course.
The whole business of seeking and granting endorsements is overdone, a game that political fixers play but that voters usually ignore. Most base their choices on their own judgments and impressions, not the recommendation of some politician, however popular. The Obamas campaigned hard for Hillary Clinton in 2016. You Know Who won regardless.
Just because Mr. Tory was elected three times does not mean voters will follow him to the polling station like children trailing the Pied Piper.
Mr. Ford’s scare tactics are likely to fall just as flat. Ms. Chow may be a woman of the left, but she is hardly Enver Hoxha. Toronto has had left-wing mayors before, most recently David Miller. The city did not burn down. Business leaders did not run for the hills. No one is “terrified” of Ms. Chow.
In fact, the whole stop-Chow thing may backfire, giving her a further boost from those who resent being told what to do in the polling station. If the polls are right, Mr. Ford will soon have to work with someone whom he called a disaster just days before her election.
Marcus Gee