Maybe George Smitherman is smarter than the rest of us. Maybe all his veering to the right means he knows something we don’t about the voting public.
But from the outside looking in, it’s not just the pundits who are asking WTF? How did the front-runner in the race for mayor, the self-styled Toronto boy, the chosen one, go from king of the heap to flirting with disaster?
Political observers who watched him in the mayoral debate at York Memorial on September 9 and the TVO set-to two days earlier couldn’t help but remark that Smitherman didn’t seem to be in the fight, the famous fire that won him the nickname Furious nowhere to be seen.
The Gentler George routine is more about taking off the offending edge, putting a kinder face on a candidate whose bad rep precedes him. Have you noticed he’s been smiling a lot more lately? He also seems more at ease, unaware of, or unconcerned about, the negative descriptions (can we say death watch?) of his campaign. What if the next poll shows him sliding further?
It’s not hard to imagine a slide like the one that preceded the defeat of his old mentor, Barbara Hall, in the 2003 runoff. He has people behind him who are too smart to let that happen, or so we’re told.
But there’s no doubt the Smitherman campaign is showing signs of wear and tear.
Workers are weary, a few counting the days until it’s over, judging by their tone of voice when asked how things are going. Understandable. Some have been on the campaign trail for a year now.
Just when it couldn’t get any worse for Smitherman, last week one of the rival campaigns (come out, come out, wherever you are, Rob Ford) scared up a brother who’s been estranged from the family for 30 years to say he’s running for council in Ward 8 and voting for the other guy from Etobicoke for mayor.
Smitherman hasn’t helped his cause by going through a political identity crisis right before our eyes, tacking to and fro with almost every blink.
One second he’s announcing a plan to freeze property taxes (which really amounts to a tax cut, since revenues from a tax freeze are forever lost), the next he’s flip-flopping on a biz tax to create jobs for youth.
Where’s the small-l liberal pol who would have stuck to his guns on that one, told his opponents in no uncertain terms that we have a huge youth unemployment problem?
And then there are those musings about contracting out garbage services and some bus routes.
What Smitherman should have done was come out of the blocks saying something like: “Hey, David Miller’s been a great mayor. But I can do better. No, we together can do better,” or words to that effect.
After all, as the Toronto point guy for the provincial Libs, Smitherman already has a stake in city-building ideas now taking root on the waterfront. See the 2015 Pan-Am Games, around which he hasn’t said much lately about being a driver for waterfront goodies.
Smitherman’s been better in the debates lately but the all-important momentum has eluded him. Right now, Rossi and Ford are sucking up most of the attention, even if it’s for all the wrong reasons.
It’s said in municipal politics, and it’s been true of this race, that having people talking about you is better than not. If the media are focusing on Rossi and Ford, then in the public’s mind that’s who’s in the race.
The Smitherman camp, keen to reclaim lost ground, are constructing a new narrative. They invited the media on Monday, September 13, to take a walk around the candidate’s old neighbourhood in the wilds of central Etobicoke, not far from the hum of Hwy 427, to pump Smitherman’s suburban roots. The aim: to connect the dots in the candidate’s life all the way back to his childhood.
Stops at the old family home, a leafy sidesplit with carport and swimming pool, at Sedgebrook and Beaver Bend, and a talk with a neighbour whom Smitherman used to hit up for candy as a kid (he got a KitKat this time) leave just the right amount of nostalgia hanging in the air.
Smitherman’s two sisters and mother are along for the stroll down memory lane, setting the scene for the perfect family portrait, a pull-at-the-heartstrings moment. The media, though, are conspicuously absent.
Only a lone cameraman from Global and yours truly are here to take in the pathos. Perhaps it’s wasn’t the smartest idea to ask the media out to the burbs in the middle of rush hour traffic.
Only a week after the official post-Labour Day start of the mayor’s race, Smitherman has been trumped again, this time by Rossi’s Toronto Tunnel-to-nowhere announcement earlier in the day.
Smitherman campaign chair Bruce Davis, watching the candidate on his rounds from a shady spot under a nearby tree, is floating a new storyline: a race between two kids from Etobicoke, one named Ford, who “wants to tear the city apart,” the other named Smitherman, who thinks it needs saving.
Just then, Davis’s phone buzzes with word that someone has pulled the fire alarm at Smitherman’s old alma mater, Burnhamthorpe C.I., where later tonight, the candidate is scheduled to deliver a speech to rally the troops. Davis mutters something about Liberal strategist Warren Kinsella, who recently joined the Rossi team, being behind it. He’s only half-joking.
This bunch is getting a little punchy. Davis’s face betrays a hint of resignation when talking about the campaign’s own latest polling. Maybe he’s just tired.
Later, at the all-important rally at Burnamthorpe C.I., in the same cafeteria where Smitherman wowed as student council president all those years ago, things look disappointing early on for what handlers have billed as a speech on Smitherman’s vision for Toronto. Maybe 75 people have shown up, and the room has been cut in half to make the gathering look bigger for the two television cameras.
But Smitherman rises to the occasion.
If the earlier walkabout in the old ‘hood seemed contrived for the cameras, a little narcissistic, his speech holds out hope.
There are as many brown faces as white in the room, and it’s easy to get a little choked up over Smitherman’s “diversity is our strength” pitch.
At least now there’s a plan – to drive a wedge into Ford’s key support in the burbs by tapping the immigrant vote. Fertile ground, potentially, given Ford’s unfortunate musings on the subject of immigrants.
The event has the glow of a campaign revving for renewal, the promise of a new start. Trouble is, we’re nine months in. Smitherman works the room, shaking every hand, hugging every old woman in the joint.
enzom@nowtoronto.com
