It’s an odd thing that the 2010
Toronto mayoral race brings Barack Obama to mind. Most people remember
his splendid victory, but few have noticed that he bought the presidency
by outspending his opponent to the tune of hundreds of millions of
dollars.
In Toronto we have another
flamboyant character … another liberal sort named George Smitherman. The
Toronto Star already has him strolling to victory with a published poll
in January showing him well ahead with 44 percent of decided voters.
Adam Giambrone is second with 17 percent though he hasn’t registered to
run yet.
Like Obama, Smitherman is a smooth
liberal and he’ll look wonderfully gay and progressive at the head of
the Pride Parade and at other city events. Once he’s in the media will
shower praise on him and like in Obama’s election, they’ll fail to
mention that the mayor’s chair was bought at the expense of democracy.
As the Toronto Star notes,
mega-fundraiser Ralph Lean has joined Smitherman’s camp, bringing 40
veteran fundraisers to raise the roughly $1.4 million maximum allowed a
mayoral candidate. Lean was considering Rocco Rossi but chose Smitherman.
Both Rossi and Smitherman agreed to take a serious look at Lean’s desire
for a mayor that promotes public-private partnerships, selling off city
assets and outsourcing services.
Rossi does have fundraising
abilities from his days with the federal Liberals and a charity, so he
can at least mount a campaign against Smitherman. Most of the other
candidates simply can’t raise anywhere near the maximum amount and will
be relegated to fringe candidate status.
We the public have also been sent
to the fringe, being given a choice between a couple fiscal conservative
types who don’t really want to run a city for people, but would rather
be elected in corporate CEO mode to be in charge of selling everything
off to the private sector. And not only that, the city then may really
be run through the hidden agenda of a fundraiser who just happens to own
the mayor.
For there to be any real mayoral
race at all we have to assume that at least a couple other candidates
will manage to raise funds and mount a challenge to Smitherman … which
will be pretty darn hard when the Toronto Star is going to champion
money-bags Smitherman all year long.
So if everyone’s on the Fringe,
which candidates are genuine when this election could be like the last
one with as many as fifty names on the ballot? So far I’ve identified
six candidates that have knowledge of city politics, and a bunch of
others that are mostly fringe nuts. The top candidates at the end of
January are George Smitherman, Joe Pantalone, Rocco Rossi, Georgio
Mammoliti, Sarah Thompson and Sonny Yeung. All six have or will have
solid web sites. Ironically the two lesser names, Sonny Yeung and Sarah
Thomson are also fiscal conservative types. At least Sonny Yeung is a
different sort of fiscal conservative.
He favours cuts to the monstrous police budget.
Sarah Thompson has newspaper and
business experience and
is another dreary conservative droning on about opening everything up to
private companies.
A sample of some fringe nuts …
well, Georgio Mammoliti is the godfather of fringe nuts even though he’s
an elected councilor. He can pull in some votes in spite of crazy plans
for a City of Toronto Casino and Lottery. Anyone remember his days as
the cat man, rounding up stray cats all over North York to put them
down. Live in fear of Mammoliti as mayor … if you’re a cat … or a human
being with even partial sanity.
A few more fringe nuts. Well,
there’s the good old racist candidate, Don Andrews. Wouldn’t it be great
to have white power Andrews in there as mayor? Think of the world wide
attention Toronto would get. Or how about Mark State, the guy who thinks
all panhandlers are crack heads … State has a web page detailing how
he’ll bring about a zero crime rate in Toronto. Then there’s Stephen
Feek who so far has a nutty logo on his face book page but no picture of
himself. He’s pissed because he can’t get media attention but he also
has no platform to speak of yet. John Letonja is another great mayoral
hopeful; he wants Toronto to make its own movies, bring back prison
labour, and fill all abandoned buildings with city recycling machinery.
Science fiction guy Andrew Barton favours the idea of crowd sourcing
(hey what’s that?) well, say we want something grand built for the
waterfront or whatever … instead of using expensive labour, the mayor
just uses crowd sourcing like geeks do on scientific projects. He puts
the specs on the city web site and all sorts of interested citizens do
the work for free or maybe for a tax break or tickets. No worries about
written contracts, wages or expensive management personnel, and in the
end you get a Frankenstein version of the Matrix instead of the intended
project. Barton also kind of likes Mammoliti’s idea for a Casino and
might put a punch-in-the-head levy on the hotel industry or open up the
City of Toronto Act to create all sorts of new levies and taxes
………………….
So have you heard enough … I mean
enough to realize that we need better candidates for mayor than a bunch
of fiscal conservatives, loonies, and jokers that want to sell our city
off? And protection, too … maybe a big lump sum of public money should
be provided to all candidates that can poll over 8 percent of the vote 6
months into the race … or some other mechanism to insure a fair race
between some credible candidates.
As it is Toronto city democracy is
in the doghouse, but I’m not assigning blame because I know how hard it
is for us to fight back when we’ve been tossed out on the fringe. Heck,
if you’re with the Toronto Star you might even think all is well and as
it should be. Personally I wish a strong candidate would rise from the
left, deliver a genuine civic vision, get a body of citizens campaigning
and raising funds, and kick Smitherman down to the bottom of the Metro
Hall steps.
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