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Defeat For Doug Ford In Toronto's Mayoral Race [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-06-30
June was Byelection Month in Canada. That's not normally a thing but it turned out that the Liberal Federal Government called Byelections to fill four vacancies on the same day (June 19) while Toronto had to have a rare Mayoral Byelection to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Mayor John Tory as a result of a sex scandal. Meanwhile at the other end of the country in British Columbia there were Byelections was called to fill two Provincial seats (June 24). Normally Byelections can be pored over to define what if anything they tell us about the larger political picture or they can be quickly dismissed as purely local affairs of no interest. This time? A little of both. Starting this week with the biggest; the Toronto Mayoral Election. (Note; Assuming most Americans aren’t familiar with our politics this is going to be a long article)
One might think the four Federal seats would be more important but even if the opposition Tories won all four (which nobody thought likely) it wouldn't change the balance of power in the House although it would have embarrassing to the ruling Liberal Party, plus Toronto is not only Canada's largest city it literally larger then most entire Provinces and the stakes for how it might change it's relationship with the hostile Conservative Provincial government of Doug Ford. Yes he's the brother of the late crack smoking Mayor Rob Ford.
Firts some background; With the exception of British Columbia and Montreal most cities in Canada do not have formal municipal political parties and this includes Toronto. However that doesn't mean they don't exist and pretty much everybody knows who is who. The NDP (roughly the equivilant to the UK Labour Party) does openly endorse candidates and uses party colours (orange) but notably the four successful NDP backed Mayors; William Dennison (1967-1972), John Sewell (1978-1980), Barb Hall (1994-97) and David Miller (2003-2010) promptly resigned their party membership (Sewell was not actually an official member anyway) and ran as non-partisans usually getting support from some Liberals. Also notably those who didn't resign their membership and ran as openly NDP lost, namely Jack Layton (1991) and Olivia Chow (2014) lost their elections. The rational is that the Mayor has to able to work with both the Federal and Provincial governments regardless of party and should basically stay aloof from party politics. The Liberals and Tories normally do the same but in the 2000's Conservative backed candidates became more nakedly partisan paticularly the Ford Brothers who won one election with Rob Ford in 2010 and lost the next with Doug to John Tory in 2014. Tory had actually been the unsuccessful leader of the Provincial Conservatives from 2004-2009 after losing a 2003 Mayors race to the afore mentioned David Miller, but upon returning to municipal politics he dropped his party label as well and finally won the job by defeating right winger Doug Ford in 2014. As Mayor Tory generally presented himself as a no-drama centerist technocrat and won relection easily twice in 2018 and 2022 only to resign in disgrace after a sex scandal with an Executive Assistant a year later thus forcing the first ever Mayoral Byelection. Previous vacancies (there's been a couple of resignations and deaths in the past) were filled by City Council vote but since there was almost a whole term to fill they decided to have a byelection instead.
Toronto Mayoral elections when there is no incumbent usually follow a pattern, attract at least a half dozen high profile candidates at the start, plus dozens of fringe and joke candidates (it is quite cheap and easy to file papers to run) then winnow it down to two or three as obvious losers drop out to endorse the leading corporate centrist type. This time while they started with a gaggle of candidates none dropped out leading to the largest field ever. Among the biggest names were four sitting councilors, a former councilor and Federal MP, various former Councilors and Provincial or Federal MP's, a former Police Chief, a newspaper columnist, a few activists, an eccentric TV talkshow host and actor and an antivaxx grifter among the 102 candidates which is huge number even by Toronto standards. The biggest names were;
Olivia Chow; A former candidate in 2014 (when she finished third behind Tory and Doug Ford) and a former long time NDP City Councilor and Federal Member of Parliament, as well as being the widow of former NDP leader Jack Layton who is still a beloved figure among the party base along with her support in the Chinese community gave her the largest support base and once she announced she took an immediate huge lead which she never gave up. She ran as an unapologetically left wing candidate promising to deal with the city's serious housing shortage stop any service cuts and build more transit as well as opposing the Provincial Ford government's plans to demolish the former Ontario Place Park on the lakeshore to build a giant private spa, the much loved Ontario Science Center and giving over huge swaths of greenspace on the outskirts to developer cronies all of which is extremely unpopular. Once Chow entered the race (she delayed for weeks) she took a massive lead and the others had to compete to be the anti-Chow but unlike in previous elections none would agree to back out. One reason being that some of the others had serious policy differences and agendas among themselves with another factor being that unlike in a general election where sitting Councilors must step down to run for Mayor this time four ran while keeping their seats regardless of results. This means that while previously if a Councilor realized they couldn't win and they wanted to keep their seat they would have to drop out and register to run for Council again, this time there was no incentive to drop out so all four Councilors stayed in with the suspicion that they were trying to raise name recognition.
Mark Saunders; The former Police Chief (2025-2020) who had run as an unsuccessful Tory candidate in the 2022 Provincial election, he ran a strident conservative campaign on law and order as well as attacking Chow for her supposed 20% tax hike plan which he arbitrarily upped to 25%. He had the endorsement of Premier Doug Ford and Federal Leader Pierre Poilievre and was seen as Ford's handpicked candidate. Saunders was the first black Police chief and would have been the first black Mayor although he didn't attract much attention from Toronto's various diverse black communities. He started out polling well but dropped down to about second place and pretty much stayed there throughout with his mostly negative campaign seen as being flailing and ineffective.
Anna Bailao; A City Councilor from a ward north of the downtown core known as a slightly to the left centrist with links to the Liberal Party, she entered the race as a favorite getting positive coverage in the Toronto Star (the biggest paper and normally Liberal backing) as the sort of bland "problem solver" that used to win elections in Toronto but after Chow entered the race dropped to third and tried to rally herself as being the sensible middle between Chow and Saunders seeming to move into second place in the closing weeks of the campaign and she finally got the endorsement of outgoing Mayor John Tory for whatever that was worth (ie; probably not much).
Brad Bradford; Another Downtown adjacent centrist with Liberal ties (his mother is a Liberal MP in Kitchener) as well as developer ties. He originally was seen as the choice of John Tory and polled well enough early on but was quickly passed by Bailao as the centrist candidate and quietly dumped by Tory and the Star. In any normal election he would have dropped out and endorsed Bailao with whatever dignity he could salvage and if she had a better chance of winning perhaps he would have but this time he hung around hurting her already slim chances.
Josh Matlow; A downtown left wing councilor known for his opposition to both Tory and the Fords. He entered the race early seemingly to discourage Chow from doing so and was seen as the candidate of the left until Chow entered the race forcing him down the pack fighting for third place. Again in previous years he would have likely dropped out to endorse Chow as they shared much the same voters and policies but he too stayed in.
Mitzi Hunter; A former Provincial Liberal MPP and Cabinet Minister she was the only big name from suburban Scarborough and the only well known black woman giving her a separate power base than Bailao whose campaign she most resembled albeit being somewhat to her left and having more overt Liberal ties. She resigned her seat to run which gained some early attention but her campaign never really took off.
Anthony Furey; A columnist for the conservative Toronto Sun newspaper (the city's second biggest) known for his right wing attacks on Muslims, the homeless, safe injection sites, and bike lanes. He ran an even more stridently law and order campaign than Saunders including running ads using misleading AI images portraying Toronto as infested with homeless junkies. He got plenty of conservative media support but was basically seen as an attention seeking spoiler, which was probably true but with the hapless Saunders campaign disappointing many on the right he picked up support as the new voice of the perpetually annoyed right.
Chloe Brown; An anti-poverty activist who ran for Mayor 2022 finishing a distant but respectable third place with six percent of the vote running to the left of Chow she ran on a detailed platform on housing, education and the environment. Like Matlow she was essentially edged out by Chow's entrance.
Besides these seen as being the major candidates there were still several other notables.
Giorgio Mammoliti; Once known as one of Toronto's most notorious political figures. Coming from a working class inner suburb of York Mammo started his career aged 28 winning a seat for the Provincial NDP in 1990 as a bombastic populist who feuded with his own party particularly on the issue of gay marriage and softening drug laws both of which he opposed. He was defeated for reelection and swiftly moved to the belligerent right and winning a seat on City Council where he gained attention for stunts like his plan to attract another NHL team and a casino. His seat bordered on Rob Ford's and the two were bitter enemies with Ford calling him "Gino Boy". When they both ran for Mayor in 2010 he denounced Ford as the "candidate of the rich" but they co-sponsored a resolution denouncing Pride Week and once it became clear Ford was going to win he dropped out and endorsed him. Once the Fords won Mammo rushed to their side with Lindsey Graham-type speed and became their most vitriolic attack dog and among other witty bon mots attacking their critics as Marxists calling social housing residents as "cockroaches" and getting suspended from Facebook. By 2018 even his his constituents had tired of his antics and when Doug Ford became Premier he inadvertedly screwed Mammo over by merging ridings forcing him to run against longtime NDP incumbent Anthony Perruzza who defeated him. Mammo left town in a huff moving to the vacation cottage town of Wasaga Beach and running for Mayor there in 2023 and badly losing again. His popping up in Toronto and announcing he was running he was running for Mayor again led to some snickering but since then he'd been strangely absent not attending any debates or doing any apparent campaigning and exactly why he's running is a mystery. He never had a chance of winning or getting the endorsement of erstwhile ally Doug Ford but he could always be counted on to make a spectacle of himself but this time he didn't even do that and he didn't register in the polls.
Anthony Perruzza; A former NDP Provincial MPP and later Councilor who defeated the afore mentioned Mammolitti in 2018. He ran a conventional NDP platform, did some debates and media and was seemingly relying on having a somewhat different base in the North York inner suburbs than the downtown base of Chow and Matlow along with support in the Italian community however he never took off or dropped out. He did consistently poll better than Mammolitti though. Or Rob Davis.
Rob Davis; Another former Conservative suburban Councilor from 1991 to 2000 and unsuccessful Provincial Tory candidate running on a standard right wing platform of law & order, low taxes and anti-bikes (Toronto conservatives are always bitterly opposed to bike-lanes). Oddly aside from Furey the two Conservative candidates, Saunders and Davis, were both black but once Saunders entered the race there was no need for two of them and Davis was largely ignored.
Celina Caesar-Chavannes; A former one term Liberal MP who had a falling out and walked out of the party and endorsed the Tories in the next election. Besides some vaguely progressive housing goals her main distinct policy was to negotiate to have 1% of the federal Goods & Services Tax (GST) dedicated to the cities which may of may not be a workable idea but either way it's not something a Mayor can actually do. Besides Hunter she was the second black woman in the race but with Hunter having a more detailed campaign as well as Hunter having a real regional base unlike Caesar-Chavannes who had been MP for the small city of Whitby, her campaign was even more pointless than Mammolitti's or Davis.
Toby Heaps; An environmentalist and founder of a non-profit associated with Al Gore and Ralph Nader whose 2008 Presidential campaign he was manager for, running on a green platform. A bit of an eccentric who insisted on listing his dog as his running mate (he previously tried to run the dog as an actual candidate), Heaps is actually from an NDP dynasty with his grandfather AA Heaps being one of the party founders and his father Adrian being a city councilor.
Frank D'Angelo; An obscure Toronto institution as the millionaire owner of a food and soft drink import company who used his wealth to finance his dream to be a movie and singing star, bankrolling a series of low budget crime films starring the likes of Paul Sorvino, a recording career as a crooner and an awkward late night comedy show with his various D-list friends as guests which truly seemed like an SNL parody of a talk show which made for some weird late night viewing for those who stumbled across it in the 2010's. Instead of a prank he turned up running a surprisingly serious campaign mostly around green issues and critical of the Tories which he conducted mostly online.
Chris Saccoccia; One of the unsavory bottom feeding freaks dredged up by the Covid Pandemic. Under the name of Chris Sky, a former bodybuilder turned antivaxxer turned white nationalist conspiracy theorist who made a name by leading followers to harass store owners requiring mask mandates, especially Chinese ones, and starting a riot at a Chinese shopping mall. He's been arrested several times for minor offences like assaults and threatening to kill Premier Doug Ford which prevented him from playing any role in the 2022 Trucker Convoy which he of course supported. The seriousness of his campaign could be seen in his opening his campaign in Mississauga, a satellite city on the western limits of Toronto, obviously unaware that it was in fact a separate city. Towards the end of the campaign he was touting a poll from some weird online betting site which gave him odds of winning by a landslide. Besides showing up at antivax and anti-LGBT demos and yelling at people through a bullhorn he has a small army of online Twitter trolls because of course he does.
Xiao Hua Gong; One final crank candidate, Gong was an obscure Hong Kong businessman and crypto bro accused of running a pyramid scheme. He only gained attention though his blanketing the city with election signs far exceeding the numbers of more legit candidates and having a float in the Pride Parade all of which cost him a fortune. Observers were undecided whether he was using the campaign to launder money or he was just delusional with as time went on the latter seemed more likely. The strange and ubiquitous yet faceless nature of his campaign caught the attention of some school students who started their own Pro Gong campaign which actually finished second in the student elections poll which is normally won by the NDP or Greens and was won here by Chow. His actual platform such as it existed, was mostly a promo for crypto because of course it was.
Kevin Clarke; Another obscure Toronto institution. A mentally ill and sometimes homeless perennial candidate who has run in every Federal, Provincial or Municipal election for over twenty years. Since he doesn't get invited to debates and has no money his campaigns consist of wandering around wearing a sandwich board and using chalk to scrawl "K Clarke For Mayor" on sidewalks. I mention him because I actually met him when we both ran in an election in the 90's (I ran for the Greens) and he once called me up, put me on a conference call then made a prank call to the Liberal MP who hung up. So that was fun. Toronto elections can get weird. Speaking of which another candidate was some dude who actually lives down the hall in my downtown apartment building. I have no idea why he was running.
By election day with Chow in the lead the rhetoric against Chow had gotten hysterical. Other candidates accused her of wanting to raise taxes by 25% which appears to be a random figure but was widely repeated in the media particularly the Toronto Sun. She was also accused of planning to ban cars as part of the nefarious "Fifteen Minute City" agenda. Provincial Premiers don't normally involve themselves in municipal elections, let alone Federal ones but Doug Ford (in power since 20) endorsed Saunders and denounced Chow as a Socialist who would bankrupt the city saying "God help Toronto if she wins" although the city has been under conservative rule in one form or another since 2014 during which time housing and transit are widely seen to be in crisis. The NDP of course backed Chow while the Federal and Provincial Liberals followed their usual practice of not getting directly involved although it was assumed they were quietly divided between Bailao, Bradford and Hunter anyway. By the final weeks Bailao had moved into a solid second place earning her a belated endorsement from Tory.
As is usual in Toronto elections there was pressure on various no-hope candidates to drop out to form an anti-Chow alliance as had happened to defeat Jack Layton in 1991 however none did. Even if they had it's far from clear that any such alliance was possible anyway given the serious differences in the various candidates. Polls asking voters about second choices showed that if the liberal/left Matlow, Bailao, Bradford, Hunter or Perruzza had dropped out the majority of their voters would have gone to Chow anyway rather than Saunders while if Saunders had dropped out his right wing support would have gone to Furey or stayed home rather than a Liberal like Bailao let alone the left wing Matlow. A centrist alliance of Bailao, Bradford and Hunter was in theory possible but even then a longshot to actually deliver all their voters and win.
The final results were;
Chow - 269,372 - 37%
Bailao - 235,175 - 32%
Saunders - 62,167 - 9%
Furey - 35,899 - 5%
Matlow - 35,572 - 5%
Hunter - 21,229 - 3%
Brown - 18,831 - 3%
Bradford - 9,254 - 1%
Saccoccia (Chris Sky) - 8,001 - 1%
Perruzza - 3,025
Gong - 2,983
Mammolitti - 1,105
Buried among the one hundred fringe candidates Toby Heaps got 593 votes, Rob Davis got 378, Frank D'Angelo got 343. Most embarrassing was former MP Celina Caesar-Charvannes who got a piddling 254 which was worse than Kevin Clarke's 265.
Voter turnout was a low 38.5%. Byelections normally have low turnout rates, especially in the summer, but since we've never actually had a Mayoral byelection in Toronto it's hard to know how to judge this turnout.
Chow easily dominated the downtown wards as well as one in the inner suburbs of Scarborough with a large Chinese community, she finished a strong second in the others. Bailao won in suburban Etobicoke (Ford's base), wealthy northern wards and the rest of Scarborough finishing second in the others. Saunders failed to win or place in a single ward including Ford's Etobicoke in spite of Ford's active support. None of the other candidates won in any ward including incumbents in their own wards although Matlow and Hunter at least finished third in theirs. The closeness of the final result showed that much of the anti-Chow vote had lined up behind Bailao but many conservatives no matter how much they hate Chow just couldn't bare to vote for the Liberal Bailao and stubbornly stuck with Saunders or Furey while much of Matlow's support did go to Chow. As might be expected antivaxxer Chris Sky cried foul and claimed he had uncovered massive election fraud, then Gong decided to get in on the fun and demanded a recount despite losing by over 260,000 votes.
Looking at the stats pundits pointed out that in winning here Chow actually only got about forty thousand votes more than she did in 2014 when she finished third against Tory and Ford (in a voter turnout of 55%) and thus had no "mandate". Although the Tory endorsed Bailao got a hundred thousand fewer votes than Tory did in 2014 and the Ford endorsed Saunders got two hundred and eighty thousand fewer votes. Moving ahead Chow is expected to consolidate by reaching out to the other sitting councilors, particularly the left leaning Matlow and Perruzza along with Bradford whose ward is also left leaning and offer them plumb posts on the Mayor's Executive as well as offering Brown some sort of job on a relevant committee. While Chow also offered an olive branch to Bailao (not hard for Chow to do as her campaign was exceeding free of negative attacks on her rivals unlike some of their campaigns) everybody expects Bailao to run again next time given her strong second place here. Saunders on the other hand suffered another crushing defeat inspite of the high profile support from the Provincial and Federal Tories and is done. Another candiate expected to run again was the right wing first time candidate Furey whose fourth place finish (edging out the veterans Matlow, Hunter, Bardford and Perruzza) was touted as a success by the conservative media but objectively speaking 5% is not that impressive and on par with some joke canididates of the past and there seems to be little appetite for the harsh demonizing of the homeless he advocated. Still unlike Saunders or Bradford, Furey is a media figure looking for attention which he got so he will most likely be back for more. Besides Furey's vote some left commentators were disturbed by the 8,000 votes for Chris Sky, the anti-vaxx thug and crank but that's actually considerably less than the over 25,000 votes gotten in 2018 by Faith Goldy (AKA Nazi Drew), an openly fascist candidate who got the backing of then Iowa Congressmen Steve King, Youtuber Paul Joseph Watson and the Daily Stormer. Speaking of losers the pathetic finish for the once ubiquitous Mammolitti means we are probably done with him along with the even more humiliated Rob Davis and former MP Caesar-Charvannes who lost to the homeless crank (Clarke), the failed talkshow host and the guy who tried to run his dog (Heaps) along with other assorted weirdos and randos.
Post election pundits naturally tried to figure out how this will impact the Federal and Provincial parties. There won't have to be a Federal Election until 2025 and a provincial one until 2026 but it is assumed this presents no problems for Justin Trudeau's Liberals who took no sides in the election. The results were celebrated by the Federal and Provincial NDP but it's unlikely to make much of an impact on Federal elections in a city where the Liberals have won literally every seat in the last three elections, usually by comfortable margins. The impact Provincially is unclear and may depend on how popular or not Chow is in two years. Trudeau immediately issued a statement stating he was looking forward to working with Chow on issues of housing which is probably true enough although he would have been equally happy to have Bailao, Matlow, Hunter or Bradford none of whom were likely to start a feud with the Feds who are currently working with a NDP supported minority government and are themselves generally disinclined to start feuds with Liberal or NDP local governments anyway. The Tories are another matter, Ford openly campaigned against Chow in strident terms and had been counting on having an ally (or at least a passive go-along-to-get-along) Mayor to ram through his growingly unpopular agenda and instead can expect opposition. Worse Ford has to be concerned that his handpicked candidate Saunders not only loser but got crushed everywhere including in Ford's own personal fiefdom of suburban Etobicoke. Even many of the supporters of the centrist Bailoa are by no means Conservatives indicating that the suburbs may be tiring of Ford's highhanded rule and attempts to distract by using traditional low taxes and law and order rhetoric fell flat even with the support of conservative media. Ford won two elections (plus his brother's successful Mayor's race) by promising a massive building spree of infrastructure, housing and transit while avoiding cutbacks. Instead he has brought austerity and sweetheart deals to developers in beloved parks and greenspace and Toronto at least seems to have had enough.
This was a long article so next week I'll deal with the three Federal and two Provincial byelections.
[END]
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[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/30/2178699/-Defeat-For-Doug-Ford-In-Toronto-s-Mayoral-Race
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