Toubis and Igor Toutchinski, two Eastern European Canadians who speak Russian, ended up with close to 4,500 votes combined in last week’s ward election. However, their individual vote counts were only good enough to make the top five in a 12-person race won by school board trustee James Pasternak, who emerged victorious despite receiving only 19 per cent of the vote (3,159 votes).

“I strongly believe we just lost this whole game because there were two of us…we split our votes,” suggested Toubis.

“Of course, our community was so upset about it,” he said. “If it was going to be only one of us, we’re going to win this election.”

Toubis’s assessment is based on the poll-by-poll results released by the city’s elections office.

Toutchinski and Toubis took first and second place respectively in polls located in Westminster-Branson, the part of Ward 10 north of Finch Avenue where Russian is the top language and is spoken at home by more than a quarter of the population. However, their vote support waned in the less Russian-heavy neighbourhoods south of Finch.

In the communities south of Sheppard Avenue, Clanton Park and Armour Heights, Pasternak managed to separate himself from his main challenger, Nancy Oomen, by receiving 500 more votes.

- Tim Foran

Men declare mayoral run a success, now set sights on the province

From the very beginning, George Babula and his Parkdale Party said they didn’t believe they needed to spend millions of dollars or make signs in order take make a bid for mayor.

When Babula and his high school football buddies decided to enter the race for the city’s top office, they said good ideas would sell themselves.Something this party was saying obviously resonated because when the votes cast in the Oct. 25 municipal election were counted, the man who may have started out as a fringe candidate pulled in 3,273 votes, fifth over all.

“Our whole goal was to rise above fringe and we did it,” Babula said. “I’ve been on Cloud 9 all week.”

They didn’t go door-to-door nor print a single poster or sign, but with what Babula calls unconventional thinking and a platform that looked at how to refinance the city and extract savings, the team of Parkdale natives did catch the eye of a number of voters.

“Just because we have taken on the Parkdale name, we represent every neighbourhood just the same,” Babula said. “We are a neighbourhood party, we are community minded.”

The Parkdale Party is comprised of seven men who have known each other since the 1970s when they attended Parkdale Collegiate Institute. Babula now lives in Swansea, just west of Parkdale, while the other men are scattered throughout the Greater Toronto Area. They regularly get together at their favourite pizza parlour in Parkdale and those gatherings often lead to talks about politics, which led to the planning and eventual run for the mayor’s office.

During the course of the election, the men maintained they had fun and learned a great deal about campaigning and elections. They reconnected with old friends and said they felt so much support the men have decided to hold at least two Parkdale Party parties, they will call them “fun-raisers”, every year.

Next on his political agenda, Babula said he plans to enter next year’s provincial election.

“There is no reason that the Parkdale Party can’t be a provincial party,” Babula said. “We are considering making it a legitimate party and then throwing our hat into the ring provincially.”

- Erin Hatfield

In the second-closest municipal election race in the city, Payne emerged victorious — as she has now in seven straight elections — by only 56 votes over challenger Michael Sullivan. Payne beat Sullivan by 136 votes in the 2006 election.Sullivan said last Friday he has not yet decided if he will ask for a recount or contest the election.

Voters’ support for the two Jane-Finch community activists differed in various neighbourhoods, but neither candidate dominated any location. Sullivan beat Payne by 345 votes in polls located in the western communities of Humber Summit, Humberlea and Humbermede. However, Payne won polls located between Hwy. 400 and Dufferin Street by 460 votes.

Along with being trustee for the area since 1991, Payne is executive director of the San Romanoway Revitalization Association, which aims to improve quality of life for the 4,400 residents living in three high-rises at the northeast corner of Jane Street and Finch Avenue.

Sullivan, a lawyer and social worker, is a provincial consultant on accessibility issues. The Jane-Finch resident has also volunteered with various community programs.

The race’s only other candidate Ram Maharaj received 1,653 votes, about the same as he did in 2006.

TDSB Ward 4 Poll-by-poll vote results
(not including advance votes)

West of Hwy. 400
Michael Sullivan — 1,838
Stephnie Payne — 1,493

Between Hwy. 400 and Black Creek
Stephnie Payne — 2,453
Michael Sullivan — 2,041

East of Black Creek
Stephnie Payne — 1,147
Michael Sullivan — 999

- Tim Foran

‘King’ at home, nobody in north

From his Variety and Video storefront at Keele Street and Eglinton Avenue, longtime York businessman and first-time city councillor candidate Steve Tasses reflects on the race he’s lost and the clear split in neighbourhood voting preferences evident in Ward 12.

“I killed, I was king,” laughs Tasses, referring to his results in polls located south of Eglinton Avenue in the neighbourhood of Keelesdale-Eglinton West.That’s no exaggeration. Tasses, who grew up in nearby Rockcliffe-Smythe and now serves as chair of the Eglinton Hill BIA, dominated in his homebase, almost doubling the amount of votes received by incumbent councillor Frank Di Giorgio. He did well between Eglinton and Lawrence Avenue as well, essentially tying for second in that area with fellow candidate Nick Dominelli, both about 350 votes behind Di Giorgio.

Unfortunately for Tasses, recognition of his “royalty” didn’t extend to the part of Ward 12 north of Lawrence Avenue to Hwy. 401.

There, in the heavily Italian neighbourhoods of Maple Leaf and Rustic, Tasses was an afterthought, coming in fifth place. Instead, Dominelli, a second-time challenger who grew up in the area but who now lives in Vaughan and works in west downtown, beat out Di Giorgio by a few hundred votes. (Dominelli’s performance mirrored that of Tasses, though, as he struggled to fourth place south of Eglinton.)

The son of Greek immigrants, Tasses says his poor performance in the northern reaches of Ward 12 had nothing to do with the fact he’s not Italian, but rather to his lack of campaigning along the side streets in the area.

“To be honest with you, I didn’t really focus that much on that area there,” he explains. “I know that I should have but my strength was south of Lawrence and I kind of focused too much there.”

Despite strong performances from Tasses and Dominelli, who lost the race by only 400 votes, Di Giorgio’s consistent across-the-ward results saved the job he’s held for 22 of the past 25 years. But he only earned re-election with 27 per cent of the vote, a figure he said election night was a message to him from his constituents that he needs to be more accessible by setting up a constituency office.

Ironically, Di Giorgio was the only major candidate who lives in the ward. Tasses has run his store in the same location for 26 years and founded the area’s BIA, but he and his family now live elsewhere. And like Dominelli, Gosling and Filici neither live nor work in the ward.

“Why they came here, it’s anyone’s guess,” says Tasses. “Did they come here because they thought Frank was beatable? Maybe.

“I’m Greek, so why don’t I go to the Danforth and run? The reason…is I have no idea of what their needs and concerns are, the dynamics of that ward.”

- Tim Foran

But she didn’t do well at all.She was Barbara Hall, the former Toronto mayor who gamely tried to become the first mayor of the amalgamated Toronto 13 years ago. Mel Lastman, the populist, and popular North York mayor won by speaking directly to the suburban municipalities with a simple, and some might say simplistic, message of fiscal restraint.

Thirteen years later, Rob Ford – another populist politician from outside the downtown core won over suburban voters with a similarly simple message. And another downtown political veteran, former deputy premier George Smitherman, was trounced.

The parallels between Lastman’s and Ford’s victories don’t end there – both were and are gaffe-prone politicians who come from the right wing of the political spectrum, with a certain kind of off-beat media-friendly charisma that tends to paper over the worst of their sins.

In these early days, the Ford mayoralty is clearly looking at adding a few more of those parallels. Ford’s first ‘act’ as mayor-elect was to bring in old-time Lastman ally Case Ootes, to help manage the transition from the old left-of-centre Miller regime.

It was a canny move. Ootes served for six years as Lastman’s deputy mayor. For the last term, some might argue Ootes effectively was the mayor, as Lastman’s poor health and diminishing attention span made him often unable to carry out the job.

Over the next couple of months, Ootes will help Ford with the delicate balancing act that it takes to set up a power base. Based on his own past record, Ford will need all the help he can get.

Because despite the other parallels, the fact is that Rob Ford does not possess the qualities that Lastman drew on instinctively: namely, the ability to befriend, cajole, and where necessary discipline the herd of councillors and city staff that he will need to form a coalition.

Indeed, one might argue that Ford has built the persona that got him elected with the kinds of behaviour that make it impossible for him to govern. He has spent 10 years on council showing contempt for all but a handful of politically like-minded councillors. This plays well with an electorate angry at the behaviour and decisions of Toronto Council; less well, with Toronto Council. As it stands, Ford has utterly isolated himself, and coming in, all he has is a powerful electoral mandate with which to push through his agenda.

That mandate will carry him for a few meetings – but after that, he’s going to have to do what both Miller and Lastman have done, and build a shifting coalition of support on council – something in excess of 23 votes, each of which is either cajoled along for the ride with carrot and stick, or hopefully, firmly supportive of the mayor’s direction.

Getting that latter support is going to be the biggest trick of all, given Ford’s hard-line views about government spending. Because Lastman had one other trick, that made him a very effective mayor in a city comprised of people with very diverse opinions.

Lastman himself didn’t hold too closely to any of those opinions. For him, it was all about the deal.

- David Nickle

Ford takes Scarborough, North York and Etobicoke while Smitherman tops downtown

Mayor-elect Rob Ford’s landslide victory on Monday, Oct. 25, night came almost entirely from the so-called inner suburbs — with the most dramatic levels of support coming from wards in Etobicoke and Scarborough.

George Smitherman, meanwhile, was ahead in 14 wards that roughly comprise the former City of Toronto — the downtown core where bike lanes, streetcars and left-of-centre politics have found their homes.That divide, between suburban and downtown voters was revealed starkly Thursday, when the city produced its poll-by-poll results for the mayor’s race and city council races.

The only wards where Ford came out ahead that included neighbourhoods in the former City of Toronto were Ward 17 (Davenport), where voters also re-elected right-of-centre councillor Cesar Palacio, and in Ward 31 (Beaches-East York), where New Democrat councillor Janet Davis was re-elected.

Ford led dramatically in Etobicoke, his old stomping ground. In Ward 2, the ward he represented for the past 10 years, Ford received 14,325 votes to Smitherman’s 2,038 and Pantalone’s 864.

But the big story for Ford was in the 10 wards in Scarborough, where Smitherman garnered less than half of the vote Ford did.

Smitherman campaign manager Bruce Davis said he expected that Ford would take the suburbs. But he was surprised at the spread in Scarborough.

“I had a model we were using, but it wasn’t quite this stark,” said Davis.

“The Scarborough numbers are quite powerful… bigger than I thought, but the divide I don’t think surprises at all.”

Davis said that through the campaign it was clear that Ford’s message was resonating powerfully with suburban voters — particularly his promise to repeal the vehicle registration and land transfer tax.

“Plus there was the fact that he returned phone calls — that’s very authentic, very very powerful with people. And the vehicle registration tax is a real sore point — it’s $60 a year.”

Davis said Smitherman’s consistent downtown support might have something to do with the divide between suburbs and the city.

“The folks downtown responded to the potential, the imminent threat of a Ford victory, and that’s what drove our numbers up even higher (downtown),” said Davis. “The fact that Ford resonated — there was a recoil effect, which is what drove George’s numbers up downtown.”

Despite that, Davis said it was clear that the Smitherman strategy of encouraging strategic voting didn’t work.

“I don’t think that strategic voting ever took hold. In Ward 19, 27 per cent of voters supported Joe Pantalone. We could have used those votes. The strategic voting didn’t take hold.”

Doug Ford, Rob Ford’s brother and campaign manager, also wasn’t surprised by the split.

But he said there was no plan to exacerbate the divisions between downtown and the suburbs over the next term.

“We focused pretty heavy on the suburbs, and we also focused downtown,” said Ford, who was elected to replace his brother in Ward 2.

“We don’t plan on ignoring the downtown — the downtown’s key to the whole city. When tourists come in they may stay in the suburbs they’ll eat downtown. We want to make a beautiful downtown and a beautiful waterfront.”

He also wasn’t surprised by the heavy turnout in Scarborough for Ford.

“You know what it was? These people in Scarborough have been ignored. I love the people in Scarborough. When Rob first announced he was running, seven out of 10 calls were coming in from Scarborough. We’re going to focus in on Scarborough like never before. They’ve been ignored for two administrations.”

Joe Pantalone, Toronto’s deputy mayor, didn’t prevail in a single ward across the city.

- David Nickle

Ootes didn’t run in the Oct. 25 election and will be leaving the position of Ward 29 councillor Dec. 1, when the new council is sworn in.He will be chairing a committee of six – including Ford’s brother Doug, councillor-elect in Ward 2 – to come up with a plan that will let the new mayor hit the ground running at swearing-in.

“I’ve been honored to have been asked by the mayor-elect Rob Ford to head the transition team,” said Ootes. “I have a great privilege to help them through the transition process and assist through the committee any way I can.”

Ootes brings unique experience to the job.

For six years, he served as deputy mayor under former Mayor Mel Lastman, and in the later years of Lastman’s two-term mandate, performed many of the functions of the mayor himself.

He has also been a key voice in the right-of-centre opposition to Mayor Miller’s government.
In the Wednesday, Oct. 27, afternoon news conference, Ootes refused to get into any specifics about the kind of advice the team will be giving Ford.

“There’s a whole process involved in the transfer of the office from one mayor to the next,” he said.

“There’s office space, the committee setup, planning for the council meeting, planning for appointments. It’s important for the incoming mayor to have a sounding board in a transition committee made up of people he trusts.”

The committee will be made up of four individuals in addition to Ootes and the elder Ford: Amir Remtula, a former executive assistant to Ootes when he was deputy mayor to Lastman; former parks commissioner Claire Tucker-Reid; former councillor Gordon Chong; Mark Towhey, Ford’s policy advisor on the campaign; and Nick Kouvalis, Ford’s campaign manager and designated chief of staff.

Ootes said he would be drawing his own salary until the end of November.

After that, he said there was no discussion about further payment – although he said he anticipated that the job would take until late December.

- David Nickle

Will work with but not ‘blindly follow’ new mayor Ford

Longtime councillor Raymond Cho handily beat York Region school trustee Neethan Shan for the council seat in Scarborough-Rouge River Ward 42 in Monday’s municipal election.

Cho received 10,811 votes or 53 per cent of the vote while Shan garnered 6,873 votes or 34 per cent.In third place was Shamoon Poonawala with 586 votes (three per cent).

Cho was also challenged by Mohammed Ather, Namu Ponnambalam, Venthan Ramanathavavuniyan, Leon Saul, George Singh and Ruth Tecle.

“I feel great, exceedingly happy,” Cho said. “I feel very humble too.”

Shan called his second-place finish a “phenomenal” achievement.

“We aimed to get 7,000 to 8,000 (votes) and we got close to the 7,000 mark,” he said. “We reached a number that could have potentially made us win…I think our team should be proud of it.”

Shan said Cho, who has been a councillor in the area for 19 years, had better name recognition and voters “like to go with the familiar person.”

Cho, 72, attributed his win to his years of hard work in the community.

“Name recognition could work both ways,” he said. “A good example is Sandra Bussin. She has good name recognition but she got badly defeated.”

Cho noted one of his opponents was “too aggressive and I think that turned some people off.”

Shan, 31, was elected as a school trustee in York Region in 2006. He recently bought a house in the ward.

Shan said he plans to return to his job as executive director of a social and economic justice organization and will remain active in the community. He also plans to run in the riding in 2014. “We will build a better base running a second time,” he said.

Cho wouldn’t say if he too plans to run again.

The councillor said he would work with mayor-elect Rob Ford but won’t “blindly follow him.”

Cho, like Ford, favours eliminating the vehicle registration fee and the land transfer tax. But they differ on other issues like Ford’s plan to reduce the number of councillors and cut back their office budgets.

Cho said his goals include continuing to improve community safety, getting rid of graffiti in the riding and having more programs and services for youths and seniors.

- Andrew Palamarchuk

Sheppard Avenue transit plans could change from LRT to subway

With two new councillors in Scarborough and a mayor who ran a campaign promising big changes in the suburbs, Monday’s election results may have created more questions than answers.

Monday night saw eight of Scarborough’s nine incumbent councillors re-elected. The only incumbent to fall was Ward 35 Scarborough-Southwest’s Adrian Heaps, who was defeated by Michelle Berardinetti. Gary Crawford won in the only open race, taking the seat held by retiring Ward 36 Councillor Brian Ashton for the past 24 years, over a field of nine other candidates.Most of 10 Scarborough’s councillors, including newcomers Crawford and Berardinetti, spent Tuesday scouring streets and removing election signs.

However, they didn’t waste any time addressing how they will reconcile their personal platforms with that of mayor-elect Rob Ford.

It might be difficult, considering two councillors, Glenn De Baeremaeker in Ward 38 Scarborough Centre and Chin Lee in Ward 41 Scarborough-Rouge River openly supported Ford’s competition.

Lee beat out his competitors for a second term in office but will need to work out his differences with Ford after publicly supporting George Smitherman. “I think what we need to do is put aside our campaign differences and move forward to work for the residents of our wards and the citizens of Toronto. Toronto is too important to be bickering about things we said in campaigns during an election,” Lee said.

De Baeremaeker, who supported Joe Pantalone for mayor, said he would work with mayor-elect Rob Ford on a number of issues.

“I will work with him to cancel the vehicle registration tax…I will work with Rob Ford to get a subway out to Scarborough, I will work with Rob Ford to get more police officers on the ground.”

De Baeremaeker though doesn’t support Ford’s plan to reduce the number of councillors, cut councillors’ office budgets and eliminate the land transfer tax.

“I will work with Mayor Ford with the same respect and courtesy as I worked with David Miller,” he said.

“I’m not walking into council saying I am anti-Rob Ford or pro-Rob Ford.”

Ford and Lee have yet to sit down and speak to each other. Lee said he wants to work with the new mayor, but the platforms each politician was elected on are vastly different and reconciliation may be difficult. One issue, in particular, the two don’t see eye to eye on is transit.

A light rapid transit (LRT) line had been planned to cut along Sheppard Avenue East, through several Scarborough wards, including Lee’s.

As the only candidate in Ward 41 to support the LRT, Lee had spent years preparing local businesses and residents for construction that would disrupt traffic for at least three years before bringing new prosperity to the neighbourhood.

Winning his ward with 70 per cent of the vote, Lee would seem to have a mandate to fight for the LRT, but Ford’s platform pledged to scrap Transit City plans, including the Sheppard East LRT. Ford is a staunch supporter of expanding the subway system and would rather connect Don Mills Station to the Scarborough Town Centre with subway rather than fund an LRT along Sheppard from Don Mills station to Meadowvale Road.

In either case, north Scarborough residents will have to deal with a few years of traffic delays for construction.

Lee, though, doesn’t think residents of Scarborough want the increase in population density he said would come along with subway expansion.

He predicted an LRT line would attract more people, but only enough for a few 10 to 12 storey buildings to be constructed along the route. If a subway is built, he said it will mean several additional years of construction and residents could expect 40 to 50 storey residential buildings to begin popping up along the line.

“Until it really comes, a lot of people find it hard to visualize. When it does show up under their nose is when people realize they may not like it,” said Lee.

If Ford successfully scraps Transit City, there will be several loose ends to tie up in Scarborough. Replacing the Sheppard East LRT with a subway would encourage intensification to northern wards, but in the south of Scarborough, cancellation of the Malvern LRT, linking Kennedy Station to the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus, leaves residents with no transit line and brings up questions about the cities commitment to the Pan Am Games in 2015.

The LRT lines were a key part of the city’s bid for the games. With no LRT, getting people to the multimillion dollar aquatics facility planned at the corner of Military Trail and Ellesmere might be difficult.

The Malvern LRT line was already delayed by funding cuts from the provincial government, but cancelling all LRT projects in Scarborough makes Lee wonder about how many people will be able to attend events.

“We want the Pan Am Games, but if we don’t meet any of the things that we are supposed to have in place, basically they may have to relocate the Pan Am games somewhere else,” said Lee.

He went on to say that even though Ford doesn’t believe in Transit City, he will still have to convince the majority of council to vote to cancel it.

Adding to the Pan Am problem is that Adrian Heaps, chair of Toronto’s Pan Am committee, lost his race for re-election in Ward 35 to Berardinetti.

She celebrated with her husband and Scarborough Southwest MPP, Lorenzo Berardinetti, at her campaign office on Warden Avenue Monday night, but noted that she won’t be found there once she takes office.

Part of Ford’s platform is to cut councillor budgets by $20,000, which will make it very difficult for councillors to have offices in their constituency. Ford generated much of his support by saying the suburbs would begin to get their fair share, but Scarborough is a long way from city hall and fewer constituency offices does not seem to mesh with a message of inclusiveness.

Both Crawford and Berardinetti refused to endorse any mayoral candidate and hope they will be able to help local councillors work with the rest of the city to increase investment in Scarborough.

“This has a lot to do with our new mayor who talked about the inequities in the suburbs. Etobicoke, North York and Scarborough were not having the same sort of deal and not being treated like the City or Toronto. I think we are going to have more of an opportunity in this government and that’s where it is going to really involve getting consensus with a lot of my new colleagues,” said Crawford.

Berardinetti agreed that working with respect for each other would be critical over the next four years.

“We are going to be changing the way things are done down there. We definitely want to work with the mayor. We want to make sure change comes to city hall but we also don’t want the divisiveness which creates dysfunction and has slowed progress at city hall,” said Berardinetti.

Crawford and Berardinetti will be meeting with the other new councillors next week to develop relationships across the city. More details on exactly what mayor-elect Ford has in store for Scarborough should become clearer as he meets with councillors over the next few weeks.

- Eric Heino with files from Andrew Palamarchuk

Local councillors’ plans mesh with new mayor’s vision

With Etobicoke’s Rob Ford now at the helm of city council, and his brother Doug filling his shoes as Ward 2’s representative, Etobicoke could have a stronger voice at city hall this coming term.

Not to mention some returning Etobicoke councillors backed Ford for mayor and share a similar vision for transit, cost-cutting and customer service.One of those endorsements came from Etobicoke Centre’s Doug Holyday, who cruised to an easy victory Oct. 25 despite the fact he hasn’t used campaign signs since 1997. Another nod came from Etobicoke-Lakeshore Ward 5 incumbent Peter Milczyn, who won a nail-biter over challenger Justin Di Ciano Monday night.

Holyday shares the vision of the new mayor, at least when it comes to transit expansion, the Eglinton line in particular. Holyday said he wants to see a subway in place of the planned Eglinton Crosstown LRT, while Ford had said throughout his campaign he wants to scrap streetcars in place of subways.

With Ford in power, will it help their desire to bury the Eglinton transit line?

“Well it might, with a new mayor and new administration anything’s possible, and I think we can take a look at the whole (transit) plan,” offered Holyday.

The former mayor of Etobicoke also shares Ford’s vision on cost-cutting.

“The city’s expenditures are going up three times the cost of inflation and that has to stop. I think Rob Ford will be able to do that,” said Holyday. “I’m not saying we can’t spend money on things … but we have to do it responsibly and within our means.”

Milczyn shares the new mayor’s plan to improve customer relations.

“3-1-1 (Toronto’s municipal hotline) needs to be built upon. Mayor-elect Ford wants to improve customer service and I think 3-1-1 is an area where we can do much more to drive productivity and efficiency of city staff,” said Milczyn.

Milczyn also has other priorities, including helping businesses form BIAs.

“Locally, I plan to forge ahead with the Etobicoke City Centre revitalization. There’s a lot happening with that right now and it just needs to continually move forward,” said the Ward 5 councillor.

The Oct. 25 election brought some surprises across the city, including the ousting of three-term councillor Suzan Hall in Ward 1, which will now be served by former City of Etobicoke councillor Vincent Crisanti, who also supported Ford for mayor.

The newly-crowned Ward 1 representative said big changes are on the horizon for Etobicoke North under his leadership, vowing Monday night that his win “marks the first day of new beginnings for Ward 1.”

He echoed Ford’s promise to be more fiscally responsible at City Hall.

“What I’ve been talking about all along is people are fed up with the abuse of taxpayers’ money, so we’re certainly going to start there,” said Crisanti. “Ward 1, by the time my term is over, will be an example to the rest of Toronto.”

Meanwhile, Doug Ford said the number one concern he heard at doors during his campaign was “I need a job.”

Fortunately for the ward, his goals include attracting businesses to the area.

“We have 8.1 per cent unemployment nationally, 8.3 per cent provincially, and 9.5 per cent in the City of Toronto – and up in Rexdale in some areas it is up well over 10 per cent,” said Ford. “We have five million square feet of open industrial real estate in Etobicoke alone. We need to fill those factories with people, and that will create a revenue stream up to the city.”

He wants to use tax incentives to achieve his goal.

“I’ve talked to a number of top CEOs over the last few months, and they all ask why should they invest in Toronto when the taxes are half the amount in the 905 area. So that’s my main focus: to fill these industrial spaces that are sitting empty here.”

It’s no big surprise that Doug Ford supported his brother for mayor, having also acted as his campaign manager.

As far as following his brother’s directives, there likely won’t be a problem, said the new Ward 2 councillor.

“It’s going to be great. I look forward to working with Rob – he’s the boss,” he said. “We’re putting together the transition team and moving forward. The city’s been absolutely fabulous in helping us and Mayor (David) Miller’s been great. It shows true democracy.”

Etobicoke Centre’s Gloria Lindsay Luby didn’t officially endorse a mayoral candidate, and had little to say election night after scoring a narrow victory over ex-Toronto District School Board trustee John Campbell.

While the returning Ward 4 councillor didn’t know on Oct. 25 what her first order of business would be for the next term, she offered, “I’m sure it will be good.”

Returning Etobicoke-Lakeshore (Ward 6) councillor Mark Grimes didn’t return calls for comment by press time.

- with files from Cynthia Reason and Meghan Housley