I came across a group of wild turkeys on the way back from the north country yesterday. If you’ve never seen the birds in the great outdoors, especially around hunting season, they’re awkward actions might give the wrong impression that they’re confused. They’re not. They’re turkeys. Sometimes they’ll puff out their feathers to attract attention.
Which brings me to the Friday before the Thanksgiving long weekend and the gobbledegook following the resignation from Mayor Rob Ford’s executive of once loyal bird Paul Ainslie.
Ainslie cited “a lack of appropriate fiscal objectives” or “long term strategic planning” in his official dispatch to residents on the subject. There were references by the Scarborough East councillor to “bullying” and “lack of vision” in various published reports.
The impetus for Ainslie’s turn: last week’s interminable transit debate that concluded with council voting to reaffirm its decision from July to replace the Scarborough SRT with a subway. That, after voting last year to run LRT on the line. Talk about turkeys.
Ford responded by proving Ainslie’s point about being a bully, carpet-bombing the councillor’s ward with campaign-style robocalls on Friday night.
The call singled out Ainslie for being the only Scarborough councillor to vote against Ford’s subway. In other words, the only one among the odd flock from the Scarborough contingent on council to question the wisdom of spending $1 billion the city doesn’t have to build a three-stop subway that won’t start moving people for at least a decade, if it gets built at all.
At council, lefties had a fun time lobbing softies for Ainslie to hit out of the chamber. But he wasn’t the only one of the mayor’s executive to vote against Ford’s subway. Denzil Minnan-Wong cast a nay vote as well, which may have a little something to do with those mayoral aspirations he’s been entertaining for a very long time.
But let’s not get too lost in the theatre of it all, the preening and flapping of wings. Ainslie’s defection was a long time coming. Not to mention neatly timed to pluck up former ward mate David Soknacki’s mayoral bid. Soknacki has officially announced his intention to run. He took to Twitter before last week’s council meeting to encourage his “once and future colleagues” to vote for LRTs.
Truth is, things had gotten too personal between Ainslie and the mayor for their relationship to remain tenable.
Five lessons learned from the Ford vs Ainslie flap:
1. For Rob Ford democracy, like revenge, comes cheap: Crushing the enemy is just a robocall away. The mayor boasted on his radio show Sunday that the call sent into Ainslie’s ward cost him just a few hundred bucks/ That amounts to just a few hours salary for him.
2. The mayor’s power is more imagined than real: Right on cue, a few councillors, including from Ainslie’s backyard in Scarborough, expressed horror at the mayor’s robo-broadside. Funny that since all of them voted with the mayor on the subway, which makes it hard to believe they were so troubled.
If there were a few more like Ainslie among council’s mushy willing to call BS on Ford, we’d be in a different place, instead of right back where we started with the bully thinking he can impose his will on council. The proof of that: Ford’s choice to replace his deputy Doug Holyday with Chris Stockwell, also at last week’s meeting, went poof. That spot went to Peter Leon.
3. Speaking of BS, it’s a marvel how much the mayor can still get away with: Yup. Do the math. LRT = St. Clair streetcar disaster. The mayor hasn’t actually visited St. Clair since, well, he was off the rails at the street fest a while back. Seemed to be having a good time then, but I digress. He’s promising no cost overruns on a subway, which are notorious for messing with the bottom line. Not to mention lawsuits because of the amount of land that has to be expropriated to build them. Call it magical thinking. Hey, as long as no one’s calling him on it… (See point 2 above).
4. Political resignations are almost always never over just policy: For Ainslie and Ford, differences between them had stopped being about the issues months ago, ever since Ainslie, in fact, was passed over for budget chief. According to Ainslie, assurances were given.
That’s not clear. But it smelled like payback when Ainslie’s name appeared in that Star article on the mayor showing up shit-faced at the Garrison Ball. That was followed by a most curious leak about Ainslie being pinched by the cops for blowing a warning during a RIDE spot check a few weeks earlier.
Ainslie managed to remain on Ford’s executive after being demoted from chair of government management committee to parks. But that was mostly because the pool of allies for Ford to choose from has significantly thinned. Against his better judgment, the mayor brought Giorgio Mammoliti back onto the executive from the political wilderness a few weeks ago, despite his campaign financing tourbles, to fill the spot vacated by Doug Holyday.
Now, Ford has had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to replace Ainslie. His choice: newbie Leon. Right, the same guy he didn’t want for Ward 3, and who, when he got the call from Ford, had a grand total of less than 24 hours political experience.
5. Ainslie’s more anti-hero than hero. Hat’s off to the Scarborough councillor for voting his conscience. Ainslie seemed perfectly willing to go along to get along for the better part of the last three years, even if he did seem visibly uncomfortable at times with the testosterone-fuelled bunch on Ford’s exec. Ainslie was among the very few councillors to show up at Ford Fest when the mayor was reeling from those conflict of interest charges.
But he’s not exactly going out on a limb with his vote against subways either. The proposed route is outside his ward.
Clearly, the timing of his split from Ford was no coincidence. Ainslie was among the handful of former and current councillors at Soknacki’s place a few weeks back to hear his pitch for mayor in 2014.
Looks like the campaign is officially on.
enzom@nowtoronto.com | @enzodimatteo
