Toronto Mayoral By Election

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Beals has no real profile to speak of.

Otherwise, besides the above, the most obvious omission is Brad Bradford (Ward 19 Beaches-East York Councillor)--there's also the 3rd, 4th, and 5th place 2022 candidates (Chloe Brown--a progressive who got a surprising 6% on the back of impressive debate performances--plus right-leaning Blake Acton and Green-leaning Sarah Climenhaga) as well as Chris Saccoccia (aka Chris Sky, notorious anti-mask/vax/lockdown/Soros/etc/etc activist/troll/nuisance)

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Beals has no real profile to speak of.

Otherwise, besides the above, the most obvious omission is Brad Bradford (Ward 19 Beaches-East York Councillor)--there's also the 3rd, 4th, and 5th place 2022 candidates (Chloe Brown--a progressive who got a surprising 6% on the back of impressive debate performances--plus right-leaning Blake Acton and Green-leaning Sarah Climenhaga) as well as Chris Saccoccia (aka Chris Sky, notorious anti-mask/vax/lockdown/Soros/etc/etc activist/troll/nuisance)

Oops, left out Brad Bradford. the third place finisher in 2022 got 6% of the vote, as you said. I don't think that's very high profile (and obviously 4th and 5th were even lower.)

I could be wrong about Chris Saccoccia but I don't think he'll end up with too many votes. In addition to being an outright conspiracy theorist (he might get a higher share of the vote running for a legislative position than for an executive position), he's also up against Anthony Furey who has similar positions but is more 'respectable.' Giorgio Mammoliti also has similar positions but seems to be a spent force. Frank D'Angelo also seems to be a populist right winger.

I'll correct those two things.

I agree that it's stretching things to call Chloe Brown "high profile"; but even if 6% may not appear to be much, the consensus is more that it was due to lack of means--that is, had she not appeared in debates, impressed and "gotten buzz", she likely would have been one of those grazing-1% no-names.  Besides, what I meant was more along the lines of Brown/Acton/Climenhaga having *more* profile, if by default, than Beals.  Not about their "viability".

As for Chris Sky: he's a loud totem for the "troll vote".  That is, he could wind up as the Faith Goldy of the race, and don't be surprised if he gets more votes than either Furey/D'Angelo/Mammoliti in the process...

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I would guess

Brad Bradford, Mitzie Hunter and Josh Matlow all had/have connections to the Provincial/Federal Liberal Party. Celina Caesar-Chavannes endorsed the Conservative in 2019 in her Whitby riding, a case of seemingly burning bridges.

Mark Saunders is clearly the candidate for Doug Ford.
Rob Davis ran for the P.Cs in the 1996 byelection to replace Bob Rae, but is likely a spent force.

Anthony Furey, Giorgio Mammolitti and probably Frank D'Angelo are the PPC/populist right wing candidates.

Ana Bailão is a wonkish centrist independent.

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.

I'd put Bailao in with the first Liberal-affiliated bunch.  And particularly in the event that no NDPer of better stature than Perruzza runs, Matlow--who's more of a leftish maverick than the other Lib-affiliated candidates--is the likeliest go-to for progressive voters seeking a viable option.

And while Saunders may appear to have "Ford candidate" advantage, remember how jockeying by the others (particularly the Bradford/Bailao "establishment axis") can steal from that.

And of course, Chris Sky is the extreme-case PPC/populist-right standard-bearer to go with the above.

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At least 46 people are running!? Is the Rhino party helping to get a long ballot or the candidates are all reaaly seeking the job.

31 candidates ran in 2022 but there was no really competitive challenger to John Tory.

*65* candidates ran in 2014, FWIW.

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That said, this time is a little different because it's an open seat and there's really no obvious successor to John Tory, so everyone thinks they have a shot. I think Bailao, Chow, Hunter, Matlow and Saunders can be considered the "tier one" candidates who have an actual shot. Bradford, Furey and Perruzza could put in a serious run, but won't win. Caesar-Chavannes, Climenhaga, D'Angelo, Davis, Mammoliti, and Sky are notable in some vague way, but I wouldn't take them seriously.

Most observers would bump Bradford from 2nd to 1st tier.  He's always had a vibe of a potential "John Tory anointed successor" about him.

I haven't been following the Toronto mayoral race too closely as of yet, but the candidate I find the most interesting at the moment is Mark Saunders. I'll wait for policy platforms to be released though.

Conservatives certainly seem to be rallying around Saunders, or they almost certainly will, because he's the only conservative-aligned candidate with a serious shot. As a former police chief he's uniquely positioned to run on crime as the main issue, which tends to be a winning issue for the right. Now, his time as police chief was controversial, but mostly with people who wouldn't vote for him anyway.

That said, he does need to consolidate the right and count on a split left to have a shot, and while the latter is almost guaranteed, the former is complicated by Toronto Sun columnist Anthony Furey. He's also running, but whereas Saunders is more of a "Ford Tory", Furey is more of a "Poilievre Tory", if that makes sense. Furey doesn't have a realistic shot, but he does have enough of a profile and following that he might split the vote.

I think Furey's one of those candidates who seems more of a factor through the wonkish filter of political Twitter than he'd be in actuality.

And let's remember that it's more complicated than a Saunders-vs-a-split-left race--just because Saunders is a candidate of the right doesn't make him the candidate of the John Tory big tent; and you can be sure that Bailao and Bradford in particular will make (and *are* making) strong bids for *that* vote.  That is, *they're* more likely to be injurious to Saunders than Furey is...

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I hope Ana Bailão wins.

A Portuguese-born citizen governing Canada's most populated city would be quite an achievement. Is she more Liberal or PC aligned?

Liberal.  (Otherwise she wouldn't have had a chance in Davenport.)

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I hope Ana Bailão wins.

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

 Nick Kouvalis *could* be a reason why there's an element of wouldbe "Ford/Bailao alliance" to her announced support of an Ontario Science Centre move to Ontario Place.

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Yeah I wouldn't read into Bailao adding Kouvalis to her campaign team too much. Brad Bradford, another left-leaning councillor, is being advised by Kory Teneycke, who among other things was a staffer for Harper and was the brains behind Doug Ford's 2018 campaign. I don't think either of them are turning a new leaf and becoming Tories, it's more that when you have a competitive nonpartisan election it helps to have strategists who can figure out a strategy to appeal to voters who normally might not vote for you.

But one could also rightly claim that neither are "left-leaning" in the same way that David Miller was (and Miller had an assist from Tory operatives such as John Laschinger).

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Saunders seems like he will be the candidate of the more right-leaning half of John Tory voters and most Rob Ford/Doug Ford voters. If you base your info on the 2014 mayoral election, this would be roughly 50-55% of the Toronto electorate, give or take (Doug Ford voters in that election made up 33.73% of the electorate, John Tory voters made up 40.28% of the electorate and if you take one half of that, presumably the more right-leaning half, it would be 20.14% of Toronto voters, adding up to 53.87%).

Based on my completely unscientific analysis, this means Saunders would do well in Northern Etobicoke, in North York but moreso further to the west of the area, particularly in wards 8 and 9, and Scarborough, especially further north.

I know you're not saying that Saunders will actually get 54% of the vote, that's just the pond he can fish out of. That said, I'd be careful reading into the Ford Nation vote too much. Many of those voters were loyal to Rob Ford, and to a lesser extent Doug Ford, more than any ideological association. Other right-wing politicians have tried very hard to tap into the Ford Nation vote with little success, because many of the most loyal Ford supporters weren't actually right-wing in a general sense.

Yeah, I should have clarified. He won't get 54% of the vote but that's his potential voters, the pond he will fish out of.

And when it comes to that particular N Etobicoke/North York electorate, this is where somebody like Perruzza might be worth monitoring as a potential vote-stealing sleeper factor.

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Oh yeah. You really can't put voters in this part of the City on a left/right spectrum, at least when it comes to municipal elections. In 2014, Doug Ford ran as the most right-wing candidate for mayor, lost big to John Tory in the parts of the City with the most partisan Conservatives, but cleaned up in the parts of the City that gave Trudeau his best performances just a year later.

There's parallels btw/Doug Ford's support base and that of Eric Adams in the 2021 NY Dem mayoral primary.

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Oh yeah. You really can't put voters in this part of the City on a left/right spectrum, at least when it comes to municipal elections. In 2014, Doug Ford ran as the most right-wing candidate for mayor, lost big to John Tory in the parts of the City with the most partisan Conservatives, but cleaned up in the parts of the City that gave Trudeau his best performances just a year later.

There's parallels btw/Doug Ford's support base and that of Eric Adams in the 2021 NY Dem mayoral primary.

I can see it.

And obviously, Mark Saunders is trying to hit a "law & order POC" note that's similar to that of Adams.

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So it's probably not that surprising that he tapped Kory Teneycke as a campaign advisor. If you're not familiar, Teneycke ran the PCPO's 2018 campaign, so he's a good guy to have at your side if you're trying to win over suburban conservatives.

We might be talking about a chicken-and-egg situation here, not unlike Kouvalis's possible role re Ana Bailao's OSC-move gambit.  (But even w/o that, Bradford was always more "fauxgressive")

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Olivia Chow is well-known, but I get the feeling that she might be a paper tiger in this race, particularly if the left-wing vote decides to coalesce around someone more "electable"

And in the event that the race boils down to "stop Mark Saunders", that "someone" might not turn out to be all that satisfactorily left wing after all, a la John Tory as the "stop Doug Ford" candidate in '14.

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Olivia Chow is well-known, but I get the feeling that she might be a paper tiger in this race, particularly if the left-wing vote decides to coalesce around someone more "electable"

And in the event that the race boils down to "stop Mark Saunders", that "someone" might not turn out to be all that satisfactorily left wing after all, a la John Tory as the "stop Doug Ford" candidate in '14.

Oh yeah. Splitting the "Old City left" further is 2022 runner-up Gil Penalosa, who also announced his run. The "stop Mark Saunders/Brad Bradford" candidate might end up being someone like Ana Bailao, who's preferable but not satisfactory to progressives. But hey, "preferable but not satisfactory" did wonders for John Tory.

And given her out-of-the-box endorsement of the Science Centre move and Premier Doug's turning it into a deal in a week without proper digestion, *Bailao* might now have stumbled into the Saunders/Bradford skunk box, herself...

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Nobody can point to any issue Bailao supports to classify her as CON.  She's a moderate progressive.  Her voters in Davenport (where she won for council with 80%) are the most left-learning in the city, so saying people who support her are right-leaning is not true.  This nonsense of people trying to classify her as conservative is not substantiated anywhere.

Still, more "moderate" than "progressive" (though I agree on the not-Con part, notwithstanding Kouvalis or the likelihood of her drawing some of that John Toryish couldn't-fathom-voting-for-a-socialist vote).  And that last 80% election win was by default, as there was she was the sole incumbent running and the left didn't get the chance to run a viable candidate against her (they were counting on a Bailao vs Palacio race-of-the-incumbents, but Palacio dropped out).

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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...

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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

Well, w/Olivia in the race, if present polls sustain themselves or define trajectories in any way, who knows whether we'll have tea-leaf-reading endorsement shifts--Chris Moise following his predecessor KWT, perhaps, among them...

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I wonder if the winner will receive a higher or lower share of the vote than the 29% Kennedy Stewart won with in 2018 in Vancouver.

Or the 27.54% of Scott Gillingham in Winnipeg last year.

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

Well, as has been mentioned he doesn't have any sitting MPPs, but he has some past MPPs and MPs as well as former Senator Vern White (who was Ottawa's police chief, which is interesting that he's not backing another officer in Saunders).

Bradford and Saunders have no endorsements at all, of any kind.

The highest-profile Furey supporter might be former Harper finance minister Joe Oliver (and there's also maverick Liberal Dan McTeague)--but the "traditional Tory endorsement" vibe I get is by and large Toronto Sun-o-sphere.  That is, a particular *kind* of "traditional Tory" realm--maybe more or less equivalent to the "traditional NDP endorsements" Saron Gebresellassi got in '18...

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It's notable that the left-wing candidates are polling as well as they are. This isn't the only poll showing Chow+Matlow > 40%, in fact most are showing that.

And to think that there were concerns over the left "splitting the vote" and paving the way for a right-wing candidate--and I mean Saunders "right", not Bailao/Bradford "right" (after all, it was Bailao/Bradford very often being pigeonholed as among the left-splitters).  Which suggests that either the "left electorate" is the most determined and enthusiastic this time around, or that it's "left issues" that are currently most captivating to the general electorate...

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I can see probably Saunders gaining but i'm surprised the conservative/Fordnation haven't found a home yet?

Maybe there aren't as many of those "hardcores" as there may appear?  Maybe a lot of them are willing to default to a perceived "winner" like Bailao, particularly as the Kouvalis strategy might be to target "Ford Liberal" suburbanites.

I don't automatically think suburban/less educated won't vote chow; the NDP has done very well in areas like Humber River - Black Creek (holding the provincial seat), previously done well in Northern Scarborough too. Hopefully Chow has learned from 2014 and is going to target pocket-book issues and crime in the more suburban areas. There is no Ford running so that helps, she doesn't need to win here she just needs to do OK, with the crowded field breaking 15% could get her a city-wide win. But that can also apply to Bailão too. 

Also don't forget how David Miller did well among those demos.

Plus, if she sustains her lead, I'm not sure how strong a "stop Olivia" movement there'd be--that is, maybe now, as opposed to 2014, there isn't quite the same galvanized animus t/w electing the "socialist hordes"...

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

As the Fords proved, there can be a way to bait them to the polls.  And it's hard to see who can stoke that Ford magic now, though I suppose Doug's betting on an "Eric Adams" effect on Mark Saunders' part.

Though I'd eye Tony Perruzza as a "low ethno-suburbia" sleeper factor--he won't win, but he could bottom-feed in a way akin to John Nunziata in '03 (that is, Nunziata as a 5% finisher w/certain nodes of strength, rather than Nunziata as serious contender as he seemed earlier in the campaign)

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https://thelocal.to/toronto-mayor-candidates-2023/?fbclid=IwAR1R15xMVV2urSdeJbG-EK61l570FHPZrtTkvotqP_sPMCg3RsqOC8w5I8k

Notice how some of those being referred to here (most notably Anthony Furey, but also the likes of D'Angelo, Sky, Beals, Acton, Climenhaga) are treated as second-tier.

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We've had several polls out over the last view days, and they all point to Olivia winning. The latest is from Viewpoints Research, commissioned by the left wing think tank the Broadbent Institute.

Chow 32
Saunders 19
Bradford 15
Matlow 11
Bailão 10
Hunter 6

BradBrad's best poll so far.

If this becomes a Chow vs. Saunders race, I like Olivia's chances. I'm not sure if she could beat Bailão or Bradford in a two-way race.

Also fun to note, Bailão continues to poll badly among all the firms except MSR.

If Bailao's bombing this badly, it might be like Barbara Hall '03 all over again (and Hall's endorsing Bailao, natch--a curse, perhaps?)

And somehow, as prospective primary opposition, I can't see Saunders having "big tent" appeal a la John Tory vs David Miller in '03.  That is, he'd more likely remain part of a split opposition spectrum, rather than be a galvanizing "stop Olivia" choice...

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It's a pity Toronto has such tightly drawn municipal boundaries; the city would be much better off it had boundaries more like Ottawa.

That's like saying that it's a pity the CN Tower is only as tall as it is, when it could have been as tall as the Burj Khalifa.

In fact, an awful lot of municipal experts would argue the reverse: that amalgamated urban-rural city-county entities like present-day Ottawa are inane and simplistic forced marriages.  That is, to claim that 1000+ square miles extending well into farm and rural territory is an "ideal" size and setup for a city is like a 13-year-old boy viewing virtual sexbots as an "ideal" barometer for femininity...