It was an awkward moment, one of very few in a mayoral campaign that, for the most part, was smooth sailing.
It happened while Daily Bread Food Bank executive director Gail Nyberg was onstage at the John Tory campaign victory party Monday, October 27, telling the gathered why she, an anti-poverty champion, was among the first to support Tory for mayor. (There had been a few questions about that, and Daily Bread was forced to issue a statement distancing itself from Nyberg.) And then… her mic got cut off. Cue the music.
The man himself had entered the Liberty Grand and was making his way to the stage for his acceptance speech. There would be no time for niceties from Nyberg, as important as those may have been for the narrative being floated by Tory operatives for the assembled media throughout the night – namely, that a broad cross-section of Torontonians voted for Tory. The sign providing the backdrop onstage proclaimed it: One Toronto and #TOgether. But it’s quite possible our city is more divided than it was after Rob Ford’s improbable win in 2010.
In his speech, Tory said that with his victory, the city has never been more together. That line was probably written before the landslide victory expected for that didn’t happen. Indeed, for a few eerie minutes after polls closed, it looked like chief rival Doug Ford would be within striking distance. In the end, Tory won comfortably enough to argue he has a mandate – for now. But look beyond the 60,000-vote margin to areas of the city won by Tory and those carried by Ford and a different picture emerges.
Tory’s swath of support cuts right up the middle of the city, with pockets in Scarborough Bluffs and the Kingsway in Etobicoke, pretty much the same lines you’d find on a Toronto Real Estate Board map if you were looking to move into one of the city’s more desirable neighbourhoods.
Ford’s support, on the other hand, came mostly from the have-not inner and outer burbs in Scarborough and Etobicoke identified in David Hulchanski’s seminal The Three Cities Within Toronto report.
At the Liberty Grand in the hours before voting closed on Monday, John Duffy – the Liberal strategist credited with Tory’s key platform plank, the SmartTrack transit plan – talked about the surface rail proposal in social justice terms, part of a grander scheme to knit the city’s disparate areas together.
It was a recurring theme of a campaign designed to appeal to Main Street as well as Bay Street. The video presentation rolled out on the big screen before Tory’s speech contained enough shots of him with regular-looking folks.
But it was hard to get past the faces of the lobbyists and familiar kingmakers in the room, the dream team behind Tory, and the who’s who of campaign donors who’ve contributed a cool $2.5 million and counting to his campaign.
It was hard to forget, too, that when it looked like Rob Ford was a lock to win in 2010, Mike Harris’s boys at Cassels Brock, the law firm famous for ordaining mayors, urged Tory to run at the 11th hour to head off Ford at the pass. With Liberal George Smitherman in the race then, there wasn’t enough money to go around.
This time, though, both the PC and Liberal machines got behind Tory, which may complicate matters when push comes to shove on the big issues at City Hall.
Those familiar with Tory’s reputation for being led around by his nose by his backroom buddies can already see some disconcerting signs in the team assembled to guide Tory’s transition to power.
There’s Harris-era warhorse Case Ootes, who headed Ford’s own transition team in 2010 and was later dispatched to oversee the sell-off of social housing after that manufactured TCH scandal in the early years of Ford’s administration.
Then there’s Rod Phillips, a Mel Lastman crony and former OLG president and CEO who tried to sell Toronto on a downtown casino.
At a press conference Tuesday, Tory repeated his campaign pledge to build bridges with members of council. But his choice for chief of staff, Chris Eby, the Sussex lobbyist who served as director of communications on Tory’s campaign, doesn’t inspire confidence if the way Tory avoided detractors during the campaign by ditching debates is any indication. Tory’s campaign manager Tom Allison, Premier Kathleen Wynne’s former deputy chief of staff, would have been a better choice in that regard.
Who will fill Tory’s executive and roster of committee chairs will be a more delicate balancing act. Tory will have to reach across the suburban divide, but don’t be surprised to see some of the same faces from the Ford era in positions of prominence.
As for lefties who might occupy positions of influence, that probably won’t happen until midterm. In the short term, it looks like Tory will be relying on his handlers to navigate City Hall, although he did suggest during his speech that there may be a role for mayoral rival Olivia Chow.
Tory reminded us during the campaign that he’s 60 years of age now and that he ran for mayor for no reason other than that he wants to be of public service. Maybe Tory has matured. Maybe he’s no longer a pushover.
And maybe Wynne, to whom he owes part of his victory, will keep him in line. Maybe.
60 Approximate percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot, compared to 51 per cent who voted in 2010.
15 Number of candidates out of 44 council races who won with less than 50 per cent of the vote. Christin Carmichael Greb won in Ward 16 (Eglinton-Lawrence) with a paltry 17 per cent of the vote.
8 Number of new councillors elected – if you count Rob Ford, who dropped out of the mayor’s race to run in Ward 2. All but one replaced incumbents who had vacated their seats.
1 Number of incumbents defeated (John Parker in Don Valley West).
13 Percentage of visible minority members on the new council, same as 2003.
enzom@nowtoronto.com | @enzodimatteo
