Much is being made of the latest polls showing Ford’s popularity on the upswing, despite those lingering crack allegations. But those polls gloss over one undeniable fact: Olivia Chow is still running 8 points ahead of Rofo. And practically every poll over the last year has shown Ford losing in any combination of three-way and four-way races.
Polls more than a year and a half out from an election race are of little consequence anyway. But if there’s one certainty to be found in the numbers, it’s that Ford goes whichever way the wind blows. He’s up only for as long as the next controversy makes the headlines. And that crack story isn’t going away. Trust me.
2. There’s double the trouble for Ford in 2014. There’ll be not one, but conceivably two other candidates besides Ford vying for conservative votes: John Tory and Karen Stintz.
That wasn’t the case in 2010 when unknowns Sarah Thomson and Rocco Rossi presented themselves as neo-con alternatives. Neither one of them got above 6 per cent in popular support. Easy pickings for Ford.
Not so with Tory and Stintz who are at 25 per cent and 16 per cent, respectively, in polls. And that’s even before any campaigning. Which means: a) the small-c among the conservative contingent are actively seeking a non-Fordian option; and b) there’ll be little room for Ford to grow his vote outside his hardcore base.
Stintz is already off and running, spending a lot of time in the key electoral battleground of Scarborough lately. She was there yesterday again, this time to take in the Canada Day parade. Clearly she’s a threat.
Ford can only win in 2014 with a divided opposition. And the way things are shaping up, it looks like it’s the conservative vote that’s divided. Ford won last time partly because he was the change candidate. This time around he risks being the forgotten also ran in a large field. Those in the mushy middle that went to him in droves over George Smitherman, will be less inclined to support him next time.
Tory is the wild card. If he vacillates like he did last time, then the dynamic changes.
3. It’s not just conservative establishment types eager to find a replacement for the current mayor. It’s Ford loyalists, too. Among those reportedly encouraging John Tory to run is public works committee head Denzil Minnan-Wong.
DMW thought it was time for the mayor to step aside months ago during that conflict of interest snafu. Back then Minnan-Wong was entertaining his own mayoral wet dreams. He was deluding himself of course.
DMW can be a weird cat. But if there’s one constant with him it’s his ability to serve as a barometer for what the conservative intelligentsia is thinking. His pushing Tory may be just as motivated by the fact he owes Tory big time for his own electoral success. Minnan-Wong represents Tory’s home riding.
It’s clear, too, that a certain antipathy has developed for Ford, some of it rooted in the fact that DMW is, like Ford, a product of political privilege – his late father was a player in the PC party. And it irks Minnan-Wong to no end that it could have been him occupying the mayor’s chair, or so he thinks, if not for a few bad bounces.
Besides, Minnan-Wong has gone about as far as he’s going to go with this group.
4. Big Brother Doug is no longer getting away with his usual BS. Fellow cons are liberally taking shots at the mayor’s biggest defender. A couple of weeks ago, Ford’s fellow Etobicoke councillor Gloria Lindsay-Luby called out Doug for lying about her vote on a Woodbine casino.
Former Ford executive committee member, Jaye Robinson, launched a broadside at Doug last week, openly posing the question most of us have been asking since Election Day: who died and made Doug mayor anyway? No one, of course. But he’s been acting like the man in charge. Maybe because he is.
The timing of Robinson’s heat-seeking salvo was interesting. We thought that misunderstanding with Doug over her attendance at the civic appointments committee meeting had been settled. Nope. Robinson wants an apology.
But what should be more worrying for the Fords is what else Robinson said when asked by reporters about the Doug playing mayor issue. It’s something, she said, she heard about “on a continual basis.”
She’s talking about her constituents in Don Valley West, which is not your run of the mill ward. It’s among the most affluent, and conservative, in the city.
A conspicuous number of them went against their small-c conservative instincts and voted for Ford in 2010. One notable moneybags developer from York Mills held a fundraising BBQ for Rob.
She was in a very close race last time, edging incumbent Cliff Jenkins. Robinson’s very public break with the current administration suggests support for Ford in well-to-do corners receptive to his smaller government spiel, is fraying.
5. Tory brethren at Queen’s Park are taking shots at Rob. PC finance critic Peter Shurman didn’t mince words on Moore In The Morning last Tuesday, June 25, siding with the hated Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne in that dust up with the mayor over the province’s financial contributions to the city.
Said Shurman: “I get a little tired of Mr. Ford [and] I don’t mind saying so. On the one hand he’s there to take credit any time anything good happens. When it’s time to look for the money, it’s got to be somebody else’s fault... Look, I am the last guy who’s going to defend the Liberals. But if I were Finance Minister, I would have had to say the same thing.” Whoa. With friends like these…
Original Article
Source: NOW
Author: Enzo Di Matteo
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