To begin with: Wow! Rob Ford, the city councillor dismissed by many City Hall insiders as a hopeless blowhard, is the leading choice of decided voters to become the next mayor of Toronto.
What is more, a new poll suggests that he may have pulled ahead of the biggest heavyweight to step into a mayoral race in recent history. George Smitherman gave up the No. 2 spot in the government of Canada's most populous province to run for mayor. Now he finds himself running second to this guy. If you hear a sound like a thousand vuvuzelas, that's Furious George when he picks up his morning paper.
How did this happen? If you had said a year ago today that Rob Ford would be leading the contest to take the place of David Miller as mayor, the men with butterfly nets would have come to take you away. But that was before the five-week strike by garbage collectors and other workers that turned city politics upside down. That exasperating experience whipped normally indifferent Toronto voters into a fury that has yet to subside. Who better to exploit that anger than the red-faced councillor from Etobicoke North? The Nanos Research poll for The Globe and Mail, CTV and CP24 shows that the two most important issues for voters - high spending and high taxes - happen to be exactly the ones he has been ranting about, ad nauseam, for 10 straight years on city council.
On the council floor, in mayoral debates, in campaign appearances, he hammers home the same message over and over. Spending is out of control. Councillors are feathering their nests with taxpayer money. Let's cut the size of city council in half. Let's contract out garbage collection. Let's get better customer service at City Hall. "Who do you trust with your hard-earned tax dollar?" said Mr. Ford in a recent debate. "I've been fighting for the little guy for 10 years." It's a crude, simplistic message.
Listening to Mr. Ford at city council, you might come away thinking the biggest problem facing Toronto is free zoo passes for city councillors. But it is clearly resonating with voters, particularly angry, white, male, suburban voters. These are the guys who think the vehicle registration tax was highway robbery, that bike lanes down Jarvis Street are a "war on the car" and that David Miller is Lenin with hair. Though Mr. Ford trails Mr. Smitherman badly in the central city, he is well ahead in North York, Scarborough and Etobicoke. In a city where only four in 10 voters bother to cast ballots, he has the huge advantage of being a recognizable brand: the fearless foe of big government. Whether or not people agree with everything he says, they know what he is about.
Mr. Smitherman, by contrast, has so far failed to send a message that people can understand or develop a persona they can identify with. To many Torontonians, he is simply a suit from Queen's Park who thinks he can run the city. One minute he is a fiscal conservative, suggesting he will contract out some city services; the next he is proposing a multibillion-dollar plan to expand transit without any way of paying for it except borrowing more money.
He often gives the impression of a man who is not navigating by any fixed star of principle but merely pitching what he thinks will sell. The other day, already feeling Mr. Ford's breath on his neck, he proposed a customer-service initiative, PronTO, that sounded an awful lot like Mr. Ford's drive to get City Hall to answer phone calls and e-mails. Then he swanned off to China for an "international mayors forum on tourism" as if the election were already over and the chain of office around his neck. Since he entered the race last fall, and John Tory decided not to run, Mr. Smitherman has been considered Toronto's Mayor Apparent. That aura of inevitability now lies shattered.
Of course much can change in the time remaining till the vote on Oct. 25. Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone could abandon his lacklustre campaign and join Mr. Smitherman in an anyone-but-Ford alliance. Former Liberal organizer Rocco Rossi, identified as a second choice by many voters in the poll, could come up the middle between the two leaders and steal the crown. Mr. Smitherman, a tough and dynamic campaigner, could outshine the one-note Mr. Ford in the crucial debates and exchanges after Labour Day when voters really start paying attention. Mr. Ford could say something stupid that reveals how grossly unsuited he is to lead Canada's biggest city. Or voters themselves might simply take a good look at this character and say, "whoa."
But, all the same, the fulminating big guy who everyone laughed at is now the man to beat for mayor of Toronto. Yes, wow.
The Globe's Marcus Gee and Anna Mehler Paperny will take your questions on the impact of the poll on Toronto's mayoral race at 1 p.m. ET.
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Marcus Gee