There was a garden party in Scarborough last Sunday. It was a late summer political affair.
A handful of current and former city councillors attended. Josh Matlow. Paul Ainslie. Mike Feldman. Adam Giambrone. There was wine. Cheese. And reportedly a deer sighting.
The rain held off. Then came the moment everyone was waiting for: a few words by the host, David Soknacki, on why he had invited them all there. It was to announce his intention to run for mayor.
And so the first to declare against Ford has come out of the bushes.
Of all the names being rumoured to take on Ford in 2014, Soknacki’s is not one that usually comes up in conversation – although word started floating around about Soknacki making a go of it in July when the Scarborough subway debate was heating up for the nth time.
Soknacki, for those who only started paying attention to City Hall when Ford was elected, is a former Scarborough councillor. But he’s best known for serving as David Miller’s budget chief.
He did a bang up job boosting the city’s credit rating to notches unknown to mankind. Arguably, it was Soknacki’s creativity with the numbers, that gave Miller the financial leeway to pursue a balls-to-the-wall agenda. And what an ambitious one it was.
It was during those years that Transit City was born. That long stalled work on the waterfront got started in a serious way. And that Toronto underwent an architectural renaissance boasting more condo cranes in the sky by far than any metropolis on the planet. Rob Ford is still taking credit for that.
Some quotables from my conversation with Soknacki:
“There’s a sense of real frustration about how much better council could be doing.”
“City building shouldn’t be a dirty word.”
“People don’t see everything in terms of wedge issues.”
“You don’t have to beat up people to make progress.”
On the subject on everybody’s mind, the Scarborough subway, he’s in the LRT camp, the mode that he says will reach the most people and move them faster.
But there’s a priviso: if it comes down to a choice between subways and not building transit at all, then, he says, subways should be built. Clever. Maybe even a little convenient.
But taking the politically expedient route is not something that has characterized Soknacki’s career, even though he hasn’t always shown the best political judgment. He made NOW’s top 10 worst councillors list in 2003 for some questionable voting decisions.
Soknacki is a political anomaly, a conservative with some progressive left in him. Which makes him sound more like a Liberal compared to the hardscrabble retail politics of Ford, Stephen Harper and Tim Hudak.
He left politics before the 2006 elections under unclear circumstances, saying only that he was returning to his spice importing business. But after serving as budget chief there was nowhere left to go but up. Only, that wasn’t an option with Miller firmly in control at the end of a hope-raising first term and about to trounce Jane Pitfield in the mayoral elections.
There had been a few dust ups with Miller over, for example, Miller’s plan to hire 150 more police officers after the highly-publicized shooting death of four-year-old Shaquan Cadougan in 2005. Soknacki said the city couldn’t afford it.
There were also differences of opinion on the City of Toronto Act, a major Miller initiative designed to give the city more taxing powers, but which Soknacki argued would do little to make the city financially sustainable. His instincts were right about too.
But Soknacki didn’t retreat completely from the public spotlight. His Conservative connections got him a gig as chair of the board of ParcDownsviewPark. Although, it’s unclear if his friends in Ottawa were setting him up.
The Park’s management had been a mess. The former air base was supposed to be converted into a green space, but the federal Conservatives now seemed intent on condo-fying. Soknacki was tasked with ramming it down the community’s throat. He succeeded, instead, in winning a measure of respect from the locals who had historically been shut out of the decision-making process.
Can Soknacki win positioning himself as PC light? Recent history suggests not in these polarizing, highly-partisan political times. It didn’t work for Rocco Rossi. Or Sarah Thomson against Ford in 2010. But neither of them could raise the money needed to make a serious go of it. Soknacki is independently wealthy. He’s been on the coffee circuit, meeting with developers and community groups for the better part of the last year.
He’s putting the finishing touches on a campaign team, but can’t offer names because that would be a no-no. He’s not officially registered as a candidate. A social media campaign is in the works. So are words for a punchy slogan.
Name recognition will not be an insurmountable obstacle for Soknacki. The Miller connection is but a faded memory. Soknacki calls himself a long shot. He might be guilty of false modesty. The round of media interviews last week didn’t just happen.
Declaring his intention to run seems to have caught more than just political observers by surprise. Soknacki clutters things for other conservative candidates, particularly John Tory who has been characteristically hedging. Shall we strike him from the list now that Karen Stintz looks keen to go?
Others considering will have to make their move. Besides Stintz and NDP MP Olivia Chow, the names mentioned most, there are a couple from Scarborough, Liberal MPP Brad Duguid and Ford’s economic development chief Michael Thompson, who are thinking about it. Shelley Carroll is also still be in the hunt.
Soknacki’s early entry suggests it’ll be a wide open field in 2014. And with the mayor’s legal troubles still hanging over his head, possibly the most compelling in a long time.
enzom@nowtoronto.com | @enzodimatteo
