CITY VIEWS by David Nickle

When David Miller announced that he wouldn’t be seeking a third term as mayor last year, the ground fell from beneath the feet of Toronto Council’s left wing. Within the space of one short news cycle, their standard bearer was gone – and their future, questionable to begin with, suddenly looked downright bleak.

This week, Toronto Council’s right wing felt a seismic shift of their own, when their standard bearer – John Tory – announced that he, too, would not be running in the 2010 mayor’s race.

While there are other candidates running with right-of-centre platforms in the mayor’s race, Tory’s departure is a serious blow to the right’s aspirations.

For one thing, the former leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party was a singularly popular fellow. Although things went badly for him at Queen’s Park, Torontonians seemed warm to the idea of a Tory antidote to the things that bothered them about the Miller years.

Pollsters put him at the front of the pack in September – and with a large contingent of sitting councillors anxious to help him on the ground, Tory seemed a good bet to prevail.

Of course, the same might have been said about former Toronto Mayor Barbara Hall a year before the 2003 election. By the time the election rolled around, Hall had sunk from front-runner to a distant third behind Miller and Tory.

But Tory’s candidacy offered more to right-of-centre councillors than just winnability. In a real sense, the genial party-leader-turned-radio-host is one of them. Conservatives on Toronto Council like Denzil Minnan-Wong and Case Ootes have kept close contact with Tory through the last two terms, and others on council are warm to him. Tory would step into a network of like-minded politicians that would transform very smoothly into the kind of inner circle that Miller assembled in 2003 and galvanized in 2006, with his New Democratic Party/progressive team.

So yes; there are three serious right-of-centre candidates from outside city hall still in the race. But will George Smitherman feel any deep connection to Denzil Minnan-Wong or Karen Stintz or Brian Ashton? Will Rocco Rossi have a place at the table for David Shiner or John Parker? They may all agree on certain fundamental principles, but that’s not the same thing as being teammates.

Of course, it won’t just be Rocco Rossi, George Smitherman and city councillor Giorgio Mammoliti in the race. With Tory gone, the race opens up wide – and Miller-team candidates like Joe Pantalone, Adam Giambrone and possibly Shelley Carroll won’t be the only ones to show.

As Brian Ashton observed: “I think with Tory out of this the right-wing supporters of Tory will be striking a search party now” for a suitable candidate on the right.

It’s a search that could turn into a snark hunt.

With Tory’s candidacy seeming like such a sure thing, ambitious councillors like Stintz and Minnan-Wong have put their own mayoralty musings on hold; it’s late in the game to try and cobble together a credible candidacy for 2010. Rob Ford is leaning to a run – but odds are that conservatives on council will just pile on the part-time football coach from north Etobicoke and nip that candidacy in the bud.

Because here’s the thing: most on council, and most in Toronto, understand that Ford’s politics are just a bit too far to the right to work in Toronto. Tory’s brand of Bill-Davis-era “Red Tory”-ism is about the right temperature for Toronto.

And Tory is gone from the picture.

So barring a moderate-to-right star candidate hiding somewhere in plain sight, Torontonians could be facing a choice between five or six candidates, each splitting left and right votes to the point where the new mayor could be elected with as little as 30 per cent of the vote.

And that is a far cry from the sure thing that council’s right-of-centre opposition was contemplating until now.

Tags: Opinion
Posted in Mayoral race, News