A mayoral election was held on October 25, 2010, to elect a mayor of the city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The mayor's seat was open for the first time since the 2003 Toronto election due to the announcement by incumbent mayor David Miller that he would not seek a third term in office. The nomination period for the 2010 municipal election opened on January 4, 2010, and closed on September 10, 2010. The result of the election was a victory for city councillor Rob Ford. He received 47% of the vote.
Campaign In the 2006 Toronto election, David Miller was easily reelected as mayor, winning 57% of the vote and leading in 42 of the city's 44 wards. On September 25, 2009, Miller announced that he would not be running for re-election. Prior to Miller's announcement important figures had already been contemplating mayoral bids, most notably Deputy Premier George Smitherman and former mayoral candidate and Progressive Conservative leader John Tory. Miller's withdrawal created an open race and the possibility of a wide field of candidates contesting the position. While there was speculation that Tory and Smitherman would both be contesting the race, Tory announced in January that he would not be a candidate. Tory's 2003 campaign manager and Liberal fundraiser Rocco Rossi announced he was running on December 14, 2009."Rocco Rossi jumps into mayoralty race with pledge to sell Toronto Hydro", National Post, December 14, 2009 Smitherman announced on November 8 that he was resigning from the provincial cabinet in order to run for mayor.. CTV News, November 8, 2009. They were joined in the campaign by right-wing councillors Giorgio Mammoliti and Rob Ford.
The left was initially split between two high-profile candidates: Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone and TTC chair Adam Giambrone. Giambrone formally launched his campaign on February 1, 2010, but ended as sex scandal caused him to withdraw on February 10, 2010."Giambrone offers brief apology, exits mayor's race" . The Globe and Mail, February 10, 2010.
According to Ford campaign organizer Richard Ciano, the campaign disregarded "the conventional wisdom [that] conservatives don't win in Toronto". The campaign rejected the conventional strategy of focussing on specific areas. The campaign bypassed traditional media outlets and used telephone town hall events to call some 40,000 homes simultaneously and invite respondents to a talk-radio-style event hosted by Ford. This created grassroots momentum and facilitated small donations and grew the campaign's database.
Ford campaigned on ending wasteful spending at City Hall and campaign slogans such as "Stop the Gravy Train" and "respect for taxpayers" resonated with the public. His campaign's extensive internal polls showed that wasteful spending at City Hall was one of the biggest concerns among voters, although that "seemed to be the last thing any of the other candidates were talking about". Ford also pledged to do away with the city's century-old fair-wage policy, which required that private contractors be paid the same as union employees. It was said that Ford successfully tapped into recession-weary "ordinary" people who comprise the bulk of the population of Toronto, who were angry at perceived financial mismanagement at City Hall and powerful city employee unions with generous benefits and pension plans.
Ford's message of putting taxpayers' interests before that of labour and special interests was also said to have attracted wide support among diverse immigrant communities in the inner-city and suburbs (whose demographics contrast sharply with the "urbane creative class" of The Beach and the Annex neighborhoods). By contrast, "people knew precisely nothing about what George Smitherman stood for", according to a spokesman for George Smitherman, who was considered Ford's chief opponent.
Smitherman and other political opponents attempted to make an issue of Ford's past controversial statements and incidents. However, these did little to hurt Ford's popularity. A pollster found that "one middle-aged woman explained that she would overlook personality failings in a mayor – as long as he didn't waste her taxes". According to campaign staffers Richard Ciano and Nick Kouvalis, these personal attacks were turned into advantages by the Ford campaign, portraying rivals making these personal attacks as "trying to keep the gravy train going". The barbs directed at Ford generated more donations to his campaign, as did a deliberate lack of sophistication in style. According to Kouvalis "our polling said, don't put him in a $2,000 suit". The revelation of Ford's DUI conviction in Florida, and his subsequent public apology, led to an increase in support for Ford.
In June 2010, Ford and fellow councillors criticized retiring Councillor Kyle Rae for holding a retirement party at the Rosewater Club and billing the $12,000 cost to his office budget. Rae said that unspent campaign funds he was forced to turn over the city more than covered the cost, but critics pointed out that the campaign money was not his to spend. This example was used by Ford as an example of the "gravy train" at City Hall.
On August 17, 2010, the National Post reported that a computer user inside the Toronto Star company made edits to the Wikipedia article about Ford that his campaign considered "very serious libel" and copyright infringement. Bob Hepburn, a Toronto Star spokesman, denied responsibility for the edits. "The Toronto Star owns a couple of these IP portals and they come under Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, which is a broader thing. The Toronto Star itself has a separate portal", said Hepburn.
A Nanos Research poll, published on September 19, 2010, showed Ford doubling his lead from 12% to 24.5% over second-place candidate Smitherman (45.8% to 21.3% of decided voters). The Nanos Research Poll asked 1021 "likely voters" from September 14 and 16 with Rob Ford receiving 34.4% of likely voters, Smitherman 16%, Joe Pantalone 12% and undecided voters at 25%. A Global News Ipsos-Reid poll released Monday, September 27 showed Ford's lead diminishing at 28 per cent, with George Smitherman at 23 per cent, Joe Pantalone (who pledged to continue the policies of outgoing mayor David Miller) at 10 per cent, and Rocco Rossi and Sarah Thomson (who dropped from the race on September 28 and endorsed Smitherman) at seven per cent each. On October 22, an EKOS Research Poll found Ford with an 8 per cent lead over second place Smitherman in decided voters; 43.9% to 35.6%.
Ford also criticized Smitherman's previous record as provincial Minister of Health, where Smitherman had been responsible for approving most of the sole-sourced contracts before the scandal of eHealth Ontario erupted. A Ford spokesman said "the voters and the taxpayers of Toronto are going to get a very clear message from this information today that George Smitherman has no fiscal credibility to be mayor of Toronto. He is incapable of handling a budget".
On October 12, the campaign became nasty when signs were posted on University Avenue with the slogan "Wife-beating, racist drunk for mayor!" The anonymous signs were a veiled attack at leading candidate Rob Ford. All the leading candidates declared their disgust about the signs that were quickly removed.. CTV News. October 12, 2010. George Smitherman was also the subject of attack ads later in October, with a radio ad targeted to the Tamil Canadian community and a poster targeted to Muslim voters both suggesting that the communities had an obligation to support Ford, because he is married to a woman, over Smitherman, who is openly gay and married his partner in 2007."Smitherman condemns homophobic attacks". Toronto Sun, October 24, 2010.
Spending Ford spent $1,723,605.77 on his campaign, which exceeded the mayoral campaign spending limit of $1,305,066.65. Smitherman's campaign spent $2.2 million. Campaign rules exclude a wide range of fund-raising expenditures, accounting for the over-spending. At the end of the campaign, the Ford campaign was $639,526.60 in debt, the Thomson campaign was $140,000 in debt and the Rossi campaign was $60,000 in debt, while the Smitherman campaign was debt-free. A special "Harmony" fund-raising dinner was held in January 2011 and the $1 million in proceeds used to pay off the debts. Pantalone's campaign finished $55,000 in debt, and he held his own fund-raiser to cover the debt after he declined to participate in the "Harmony" fund-raiser because of former premier Mike Harris's participation.
In April 2011, John Lorinc of The Globe and Mail wrote an article about the Ford campaign finances, noting that $69,722.31 of campaign expenses were paid by Doug Ford Holdings, the Ford family firm. The family firm also paid for a $22,713.04 contract to rent the Toronto Congress Centre for a campaign kickoff event. Both expenses were repaid but the borrowing may have constituted an illegal corporate contribution to the campaign. Activist Adam Chaleff-Freudenthaler and lawyer Max Reed filed a complaint about the Ford campaign's borrowing and over-spending to the City of Toronto Compliance Audit Committee. In May 2011, the committee voted to proceed with an audit of the mayor's campaign finances. Penalties under the Municipal Elections Act range from fines to removal from office. Ford first appealed the decision to audit the campaign, then dropped the appeal in April 2012. The city contracted the firm Froese Forensic Partners to conduct the audit. The audit found that the Ford campaign had overspent by $40,000, but the audit committee decided to not refer the violation to a special prosecutor.
Results
Official results from the City of Toronto as of October 28, 2010. CandidateNumber of votes% of popular voteRob Ford 383,501 47.114%George Smitherman 289,832 35.607%Joe Pantalone 95,482 11.730%Rocco Rossi 5,012 0.616%George Babula 3,273 0.402%Rocco Achampong 2,805 0.345%Abdullah-Baquie Ghazi 2,761 0.344%Michael Alexander 2,470 0.304%Vijay Sarma 2,264 0.277%Sarah Thomson 1,883 0.232%Jaime Castillo 1,874 0.231%Dewitt Lee 1,699 0.209%Douglas Campbell 1,428 0.176%Kevin Clarke 1,411 0.173%Joseph Pampena 1,319 0.162%David Epstein 1,202 0.148%Monowar Hossain 1,194 0.147%Michael Flie 1,190 0.146%Don Andrews 1,032 0.127%Weizhen Tang 890 0.11%Daniel Walker 804 0.098%Keith Cole 801 0.098%Michael Brausewetter 796 0.098%Barry Goodhead 740 0.091%Charlene Cottle 735 0.09%Tibor Steinberger 733 0.09%Christopher Ball 696 0.085%James Di Fiore 655 0.08%Diane Devenyi 629 0.078%John Letonja 592 0.073%Himy Syed 582 0.071%Carmen Macklin 575 0.07%Howard Gomberg 477 0.058%David Vallance 444 0.055%Mark State 438 0.054%Phil Taylor 429 0.053%Colin Magee 401 0.049%Selwyn Firth 394 0.049%Ratan Wadhwa 290 0.036%Gerald Derome 251 0.031%Total 813,984 100%
Issues Several issues emerged early in the campaign. Transportation was one issue with debates over cycling and public transit. Bike lanes on streets such as Jarvis Street and University Avenue were one issue. Rocco RossiVanessa Lu "Mayoral hopeful Rocco Rossi targets TTC, unions" Toronto Star. Fri Jan 22, 2010 was strongly opposed to such bike lanes (insisting that bike lanes instead be placed on parallel sideroads) while Pantalone supported them, Mammoliti endorsed the bike lanes on Jarvis, and Ford stated he would not remove any such installations.