Toronto Mayoral By Election

[DL]

Anthony Perruzza seems to be the only candidate associated with the NDP running so far, but I'm not sure if he'd be their first choice. Former M.P, city councilor and mayoral candidate Olivia Chow, MPP and former city councilor Krysten Wong Tam and former federal nominee and present city councilor Alejandra Bravo are apparently all weighing bids.

Apparently Olivia Chow will announce next week. KWT and Bravo are not running

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I hope Ana Bailão wins.

Her top campaign advisor is an ultra rightwing, racist Trump, sympathizer - caveat emptor

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huh...

Chow 23 - Social Democratic (L)
Bailão 19 - Moderate (C)
Matlow 18 - Progressive (LC)
Saunders 14 - Conservative (R)
Bradford 7 - Moderate (CR)
Hunter 7 - Progressive (C)

What makes you label Bailao as "moderate" and Hunter as "progressive"? I see zero ideological difference between them.

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For reasons i cannot fathom some municipal public sector unions are endorsing Bailao - even though on city council she spearheaded the move to contract out garbage collection west of Yonge St. apparently this is creating a lot of divisions within labour since most of their activists would prefer Olivia Chow. But it does suggest that if Bailao were to become mayor she would try to curry favour with municipal unions and be more generous in contract negotiations.

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For reasons i cannot fathom some municipal public sector unions are endorsing Bailao - even though on city council she spearheaded the move to contract out garbage collection west of Yonge St. apparently this is creating a lot of divisions within labour since most of their activists would prefer Olivia Chow. But it does suggest that if Bailao were to become mayor she would try to curry favour with municipal unions and be more generous in contract negotiations.

Unions can be more complicated than clean fits into the "left" pigeonhole--consider some of the Ford photo-ops and endorsements last year.

In which case, I wonder if Chow's ironically taking on the cast of an anointed "elite candidate", Laurentian or not--a little like a 70s Crombie/Sewell figure.  Whereas Bailao's union endorsements position her as more of a "low Liberal for the working guy", a la Tony O'Donohue in '72 and '78 or to some degree Art Eggleton in '80 (both of whose municipal turfs were predecessors or near-predecessors to Bailao's).  And of course, there's similarities to John Tory vs Doug Ford...

Forget traditional right/left labels, we are talking about public sector unions (which Never ever support Ford) backing someone who supports contracting out unionized city jobs to non unionized private co tractors that pay slave wages. This is literally chickens voting for Col. Sanders

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What "traditional Tory endorsements" have there been for Furey?

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Suburban/less educated = probably won't vote at all

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Mainstreet is out with a brand new poll and the Chow-mentum continues - even after they started to also prompt for Furey (far right crackpot) and Chloe Brown (very leftwing who ran last fall)

Chow 31 (unchanged)
Bailão 15 (-2)
Matlow 10 (-5)
Saunders 12 (unchanged)
Hunter 9 (unchanged)
Furey 7 (first time prompted)
Bradford 6 (unchanged)
Brown 5 (first time asked)

I realize its early and that much can still change but its hard to see who among the non-Chow cast of non-entities are going to break out of the pack and threaten her lead

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As tempting as it might be to draw parallels with the Ottawa mayoral election, its important to keep in mind that the City of Toronto and the City of Ottawa as presently constituted are very very different. When Ottawa was amalgamated they appended lots of very exurban and rural areas to the city that are very conservative. The Toronto equivalent of those areas are all outside of the City of Toronto in York, Peel and Durham regions. This means that the Toronto electorate is far more left of centre than the Ottawa electorate.   

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How soon we forget the 2014 mayoral race. Voters were looking for a centrist option to stop Chow and Ford.

That's not quite what happened in 2014. The election was all about who could stop Ford and Tory managed to position himself as the "dull, safe pair of hands" who was more likely to beat Ford. For the vast majority it wasn't about ideology or about wanting to "stop Chow". It was a totally polarized election where the only ballot question was "who can beat Ford?" - and people felt they didn't have the luxury of voting for Chow.

This election could not be more different what with so many vaguely centrist to rightwing candidates in a circular firing squad vying to be the main opposition to Chow and with there being no real defining issue in the campaign. To the extent that there is any ballot question its "who represents change?" and "who will stand up for Toronto against to the Ford government?"

My only point is that due to the very different municipal boundaries, the City of Toronto is a much more Liberal/NDP electorate than is the City of Ottawa. Pierre Poilievre is MP for an exurban Ottawa seat that is entirely in the City of Ottawa. No federal Tory even came close to winning a seat in the City of Toronto.   

[DL]

It isn't really necessary to explain to me the differences between the two cities, I could write a book on the subject. Yes, Ottawa has a far higher percentage of voters who will vote to block progressives from winning, but they still exist in Toronto and could've been influential in this election (and may still prove to be). These voters don't all live outside the greenbelt; many are boomers who live in the inner-suburbs of both cities. They have no problem voting Liberal, but when it comes to municipal politics, will not vote for progressives. Anyway, my point- if you will recall is that Mark Saunders is TOO right wing to win over these voters in Toronto, even to block Chow. If you want to compare that with Ottawa, than someone like Saunders could beat someone like Chow. It already happened in 2006.

Sorry if I sounded like i was explaining Ottawa vs Toronto to you personally. I was making the point more for the benefit of people reading this thread who may be from outside of Ontario. Its true that in Ottawa in 2006 someone like Saunders (Larry O'Brian) beat someone like Chow (Alex Munter), but that was 17 years ago and I think you yourself said that its highly unlikely someone as far right as O'Brian could beat an ever so slightly left of centre progressive like Munter in 2022 given how Ottawa has changed over the years. I think its fair to say that Sutcliffe and McKinney are both several quantum leaps to the left of O'Brian and Munter were 17 years ago.

Of course in 2010 in Toronto Rob Ford crushed a middle of the road Liberal named George Smitherman - but I don't see anything like that happening in 2023...and somehow or other back in 2003 a progressive New Democrat named David Miller was elected mayor against a centrist noblesse oblige Tory named John Tory - and I would suggest that the Toronto electorate has likely moved at least a bit to the left over the last 20 years.  

I think Chow has two major advantages this time. First of all it is an incredibly short campaign by municipal election standards which means that the centre-right doesn't have the luxury of spending nine months strategizing over who to get behind and it means that name recognition could be everything. Turnout is likely to be EXTREMELY low - especially in the inner suburbs where I suspect voters will be very disengaged. Second of all, the cast of candidates who are not named Olivia Chow are very very weak. Does anyone seriously think that in the next month we are suddenly going to see  an explosion of Bailao-mania or Bradford-mania?

[DL]

Anyway, has Toronto moved to the left over the last 20 years? It's hard to say, really. When it comes to mayoral elections, I would say it hasn't. The 2010 mayoral race was a direct repudiation of Miller, and probably contributed to Chow's defeat in 2014. As time goes by, the memory of Miller fades, making progressive candidates palpable again, but his ghost still lingers. People certainly don't want the Ford chaos again either, of course. Toronto still wants a moderate, which is why polls show John Tory would win if he were running. As a progressive, it's a sad prospect, but such is reality. If Chow wins, and is a competent mayor though, then the city will be more comfortable electing progressives in the future.

You may have a point but I think there is also a huge incumbency bias in these non-partisan mayoral contests. While one can argue that the 2010 election was a repudiation of Miller - and yet polls in 2010 indicated that had he run again he would have won! Similarly with Tory, its just that "better the devil you know" attitude. Contrary to popular belief Chow is very pragmatic and worked effectively with Mel Lastman when he was mayor 1997-2003. If people are expecting a leftwing firebrand as mayor they may be disappointed. Usually the knock against leftwingers in municipal elections is that they will be in the pocket of municipal public sector unions - but this time CUPE locals 79 and 416 which represent everyone who works for the city have both inexplicably endorsed Ana Bailao for mayor - even though she championed contracting out garbage collection in the early years of the Ford regime. 

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How's about we get back to talking about the mayoral election and save discussion of merging Toronto with all the surrounding municipalities for another thread.

The first quasi-real debate was last night at the Daily Bread Food Bank and featured Chow, Bailao, Matlow, Hunter and Bradford. Saunders refused to attend.

Not sure there was any real news or any game changing performances. Bradford came across as a condescending, mansplaining asshole. The others were all OK. Chow was questioned by all the other candidates when each had a turn to grill another candidate. She handled it well enough and I just gave her more time to get out her points. The rightwing press is starting to panic about Chow winning but they still can't figure out who is the alternative and all the non-Chow candidates are very weak. 

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There's been like zero coverage of the debate lol. I don't think it will change anything, which is good news for Olivia Chow.

It was not on network television, you had to stream it on CP24 so only diehard political junkies would have watched. Still it was a good preview of how all the candidates will come across in later more important debates.

The news coverage was mostly about how a lunatic stormed the stage and had to wrestled to the ground by security guards. From Chow's POV its all good. She has never been a great debater so the more distracted people are from the debate itself the better.

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/video-shows-protester-storming-toronto-mayoral-debate-stage-1.6399999

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There have been NDP-affiliated mayors in other Canadian cities over the years. Vancouver, Burnaby, Nanaimo and Victoria obviously. Hamilton now has Andrea Horwath and London and Sudbury have had them off and on Edmonton has had NDP linked mayors off and on since the 1960s!

Interesting the closest Winnipeg ever came to having an NDP mayor was Glen Murray in the late 90s before he became a Liberal.

Of course Quebec is a whole other thing...the mayor of Rimouski is a former NDP MP and while Valerie Plante is officially non-partisan, she has been active in the NDP-friendly Broadbent Institute.

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Getting back to the mayoral election - the spin from the debate has been surprisingly (to me) positive for Olivia Chow. She has never been all that good a debater but the consensus is that she did very well despite being under attack from all the other candidates.

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2023/05/17/torontos-mayoral-debate-season-kicks-off-with-a-protest-many-winning-lines-and-one-clear-loser.html

"I’ve rubbed up against this even before sitting down to write: None of the candidates looked terrible to me, but I thought, honestly, that Olivia Chow came out looking best: she seemed relaxed and comfortable, and like the only candidate on stage who was enjoying herself while the others did their best to furrow their brows and sound stern. She was speaking passionately and apparently off the cuff, often about people she knew, or about eye-level experiences such as waiting for the bus, or about her (admittedly long-ago) experience at city hall. Everyone else was shouting about math. The other candidates were aiming their remarks mostly at Chow, making the debate about her. While she sometimes seemed in need of a better answer to specific questions about specific parts of her plans, she appeared to shrug off the attacks and talk about how she plans to run the city. That’s how it looked to me."

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In the 1980s didn’t Margaret Thatcher dissolve the Greater London Council and put London under her direct rule just to prevent Ken Livingston from being mayor?

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Did you know that Paris had no mayor until the late 1970s when Jacques Chirac first won the newly created post. For 100 years prior to that the central French government ruled Paris. Ever since the Paris Commune of 1871 there was a reluctance to let Paris have its own mayor

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More often than they do now. Ottawa had an NDP mayor in the 1980s. That will never happen again.

It may be a while but as the old saying goes "never say never". Demographic change is happening and in Toronto areas like Scarborough and North York that were once considered "suburbs" are increasingly almost "inner city" and places like Mississauga which was once considered a WASPy exurb is now more like an extension of Scarborough. Places like Ajax that were once also considered upper-middle class WASP are now home to large Black populations and new developments that are much more "working class. Brampton was once synonymous with Bill Davis small town WASP Ontario - now its overwhelmingly South Asian.

There are projections that by the end of this century Canada could have a population of 100 million. That would likely mean that Greater Ottawa will be triple its current population and what are now leafy WASP exurbs and farmland will likely be densely populated suburbs largely populated by racialized people etc... and the urbanized areas of Ottawa will spill beyond the current boundaries. I don't think anyone knows that the voting patters will be in - say - 2070.

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Similarly, as recently as 1991 when there was an election for mayor of the old city of Toronto - Jack Layton lost by a 2-1 margin to a lackluster rightwing dowager named June Rowlands. Back in those days wards that are now in Davenport and Parkdale-High Park were routinely electing rightwing councillors - which would be be very very unlikely these days.

If Toronto under the old boundaries that existed pre-amalgamation were electing a mayor now - it would be an open and shut win for an NDP aligned progressive. In fact under those boundaries Jennifer Keesmat probably could have beat John Tory in 2018 and there would never have been a mayor Rob Ford.

BTW: Back in the 70s and 80s the perennial mayor of Scarborough was Gus Harris who was an old-school New Democrat who spoke with a heavy Glasgow accent. He was not particularly "progressive" as mayor but he was NDP pedigree.

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MSR trying their best to steal the election for Bailao. You hate to see it:

Chow 30 (-1)
Bailão 21 (+6) (!!!)
Matlow 14 (+4)
Saunders 10 (-2)
Hunter 9 (nc)
Furey 7 (nc)
Bradford 4 (-2)

So if Bailao and Matlow are up a combined 10 and Saunders, Bradford and Chow are down a combined 5 - where did the other 5% come from? I guess from "other"...since this is factoring out DK, its not at the expense of that.

I don't quite understand what exactly MSR does to get Bailao so much higher than anyone else. Forum and Liaison are also IVR and they have her in single digits...

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MSR trying their best to steal the election for Bailao. You hate to see it:

Chow 30 (-1)
Bailão 21 (+6) (!!!)
Matlow 14 (+4)
Saunders 10 (-2)
Hunter 9 (nc)
Furey 7 (nc)
Bradford 4 (-2)

and now a totally contradictory IVR poll by Liaison Research

Chow 29% (-!)
Saunders 17% (up 2)
Hunter 15% (up 4)
Matlow 11% (down 4)
Bradford 10% (nc)
Bailao 8% (down 4) and in SIXTH place!

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I think Bailao will do well with most of the white-ethnic types - Portuguese, Spanish, Irish, Croatian, even Italians who have stayed in the city (not the Woodbridge conservative types), no matter where in the City they live, not just in Davenport (although the demographics there definitely are favourable for her).

Since when are Irish-Canadians considered "white ethnic" Most would be descendants from people who came to Canada in the 19th century and I once read that the NDP does better among people of Irish descent than any other ethnic group in Canada!

As for other ethnicities mentioned, so much depends on the generation. I have neighbours who have Italian last named who are third generation Canadians who dont speak any Italian and their politics are pretty indistinguishable from the usual Toronto hipster in my 'hood

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I wouldn't be surprised is Bailao actually gets a lower vote share in Davenport than in the city as a whole. She was increasingly an anachronism as city councillor for what is now easily the most progressive ward in the city and her core voters are rapidly dying of old age or moving away

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New poll by Forum again gives Olivia Chow a massive lead with Bailao in single digits

Chow 34% (-2)
Saunders 12% (-6)
Matlow 12% (+2)
Hunter 10% (nc)
Bailao 9% (+2)
Bradford 7% (+1)
Other 15% (+1)

https://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2023/05/21/olivia-chow-has-untouchable-lead-in-final-weeks-of-torontos-mayoral-campaign-new-poll-finds.html