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Is Jeff Layton really who he says he is? A truly suspicious person might think that someone put him up against his namesake, Jack Layton, in the very same Broadview-Greenwood riding where an unknown Larry Tabin helped off leftie Peter Tabuns last time around.
We dropped in on Jeff unexpectedly at his Rosedale manse, expecting a stuffy Rosedalian. But laid-back Jeff, sporting a casual sweatshirt, greying shoulder-length hair and a beard, looks more like one of the Allman Brothers than an aspiring politician from the privileged class.
Could it really be true that this Layton, a marketing strategist, entered the race because he gets a lot of calls from upset constituents looking for Jack, so he decided to make it a branding campaign and give them a new and improved Layton?
That’s what he wants us to believe, sitting in his expansive renovated kitchen talking marketing magic.
“There’s a huge opportunity in the fact that Jack Layton has already created this unusual situation whereby we have the same last name and the fact that I’m getting lots of phone calls,” he says, “and the fact that he’s created a lot of awareness and value for the name Layton.
“What my objective is now is to create a distinction between my Layton and that Layton.”
Just how he intends to do that is a mystery, since he says he won’t have any lawn signs or fliers. Affable eccentric or put-up job by the enemies of the left?
