2014 Municipal Election: Toronto Mayoral Race

[Cooper]

The informal poll at the Star (here) currently has her around 2.6%. Obviously not a great showing. Unless something drastic happens (ie: Ford drops out), I can't see her lasting through to the end.

Thanks for the link. I'm surprised Socknaki polled even lower. I thought he'd made a bigger impression. Maybe he's everyone's favourite second choice. Would be interesting to see a poll modeled on a ranked-ballot vote.

 

[Southcore]

I'll be linking to Neville Park's brief explanation of co-op housing whenever possible. I don't know how many minds it will change, but it may help with some of the non-rabid fence sitters.

Thank you for posting that. I had a pretty good idea about how co-ops worked, but I learned a news few things upon reading. Sadly those who have made up their minds won't change, but keep fighting the good fight.

 

[SecretSquirrel]

A question for everyone: Do you think Karen Stintz's campaign is getting any traction? From where I sit, it looks like she's already stuck in the mud.

More like her campaign is in traction! Ho ho ho! Kidding aside, my assessment is that Stintz has as much chance of being the next Mayor of Toronto as Doug Ford does of being Premier. Whoever is running her Twitter account needs to take a timeout, as it has been an unmitigated disaster - and Stintz has presumably been approving the tone & thrust, if not the actual 140-character content. She doesn't seem to have any good ideas, or even a website which most people can find. Her campaign's ham-fisted attempts to connect with middle-class voters have alienated many, many people who can't afford a mortgage - as well as many who can.

Toronto politics needs more strong & capable women! Shame Stintz has recused herself from the "strong & capable" bit. I really admired her when she stood up to Ford Nation astroturfers in person at the 2012 Scarborough subway meeting, but she has wandered so far from where anyone wants her to be, and appeared so vacuous so often since the "oh actually I want to do the subway! I'm Ford without crack!" debacle, that her campaign is now toast.

Failure to launch is about right. My only Stintz-related concern now is that ShonTron might be right: what if she has a pact with Tory to be a sort of wrecking ball/lightning rod to clear the path for him. Quid pro quo, we can only speculate, but no doubt Mayor Tory would be grateful.

 

[Greg Banks]

It's probably just me who feels this way, but this all leaves me a bit nostalgic for the Metro era when we had a super-mayor who was not directly elected by the public.

You mean like Emil Kolb in Peel?

 

[ttk77]

Failure to launch is about right. My only Stintz-related concern now is that ShonTron might be right: what if she has a pact with Tory to be a sort of wrecking ball/lightning rod to clear the path for him. Quid pro quo, we can only speculate, but no doubt Mayor Tory would be grateful.

If she can't get her support numbers up she doesn't really stand to pass on much support to Tory even if she does end up dropping out to endorse him.

 

[ttk77]

Just watching Chow's campaign launch, and I have to say I'm very disappointed with her lukewarm support for the DRL.

 

[SJD_Toronto]

Just watching Chow's campaign launch, and I have to say I'm very disappointed with her lukewarm support for the DRL.

Same. To me, it sounded like she will have no intention of pushing to get the Relief Line built anytime soon and that she will want to go back to Transit City. That's it.

 

[Tulse]

The Ontario Liberals have taken all money for the LRT plan and put it into a subway extension plan. ... The subway plan did win in the end. Both Chow and Sokancki seem to think they can just easily bring back the LRT plan

Nothing is really committed until there are holes being dug. The province shifted the money once, and there's no reason they couldn't shift it again. I very much doubt that if Toronto City Council voted for the LRT that the province would insist on a subway.

 

[Tulse]

I wonder if Chow's push for LRT and lukewarm response to DRL both spring from a desire to project fiscal responsibility. In both cases her objections seem to be that they cost a lot (in the case of the LRT, she said it is a cheaper alternative to a subway, and in the case of the DRL, she said she didn't want to raise taxes to fund it). In other words, I'm not sure that her soft position on the DRL stems from a sense that it isn't a priority, but rather that she doesn't want to be tagged as a tax-and-spender.

(It may also be difficult politically to reject the Scarborough subway extension while at the same time supporting the DRL, since the latter is erroneously seen as predominantly helping downtowners.)

 

[the lemur]

I wonder if Stintz will throw her support for Tory once she's out or just quietly now out and leave it at that.

Judging by the complete tone-deafness of her social media presence so far, I don't know at what point she'll actually realize she has no chance. Alternatively, she may just be running to get her name out there before she tries something else, like running as a provincial Liberal maybe.

 

[VTB]

Nothing is really committed until there are holes being dug. The province shifted the money once, and there's no reason they couldn't shift it again. I very much doubt that if Toronto City Council voted for the LRT that the province would insist on a subway.

+1 on this.

And for all the talk about DRL from Tory and Stintz, I'd like to assess the situation when and if they come forward with a funding plan.

 

[typezed]

I'll be linking to Neville Park's brief explanation of co-op housing whenever possible. I don't know how many minds it will change, but it may help with some of the non-rabid fence sitters.

Most interesting part of this for me was Park's mention of living down the street from a hardware store co-op in Forest. Robyn Doolittle is also from Forest. It's a small place.

I agree that it reflects poorly on Stintz to be using this talking point against Chow. But if non-subsidized tenants of co-ops were truly paying their way wouldn't there still be a place for co-ops without government subsidy? The article says that those people pay market rent but that in practice it works out to be much cheaper because the building isn't looking to net a profit. Sounds like a good deal. If this dynamic actually works then it should still be a means of providing better quality affordable housing for working or middle-class people who can afford to pay a market rent. We then haven't solved the problem of housing the poor, but we would be improving the living standards of a broad segment of society. Otherwise, it does look like those who are paying 'market rents that in practice end up being lower than market cost' are piggy-backing on the social needs of the poor.

That doesn't mean the Layton-Chow's were in a co-op for slippery reasons. I'm sure they believe they were supporting a better path. Maybe Chow could redirect the conversation about her past arrangement to the housing disconnect in Toronto today, where massive amounts of new units are being constructed but housing is becoming increasingly unaffordable, even for people with good jobs. Maybe frame the conversation not in terms of homeless in the streets but grown children who can't afford to move out of the house and get on with their lives, while the market produces a surplus of penthouses begging for multi-millionaire overseas investors.

 

[Grimace]

^^ It would be great to frame the conversation, but this is the media we're talking about, much better for Chow to change the conversation.

 

[the lemur]

I wonder if Chow's push for LRT and lukewarm response to DRL both spring from a desire to project fiscal responsibility. In both cases her objections seem to be that they cost a lot (in the case of the LRT, she said it is a cheaper alternative to a subway, and in the case of the DRL, she said she didn't want to raise taxes to fund it). In other words, I'm not sure that her soft position on the DRL stems from a sense that it isn't a priority, but rather that she doesn't want to be tagged as a tax-and-spender.

(It may also be difficult politically to reject the Scarborough subway extension while at the same time supporting the DRL, since the latter is erroneously seen as predominantly helping downtowners.)

I think you're right. She's probably being cautious at this stage. You can't really lose by being pro-transit, but you need to do it in a way that suggests you want to be careful with money and serve people's interests, to get attention first, instead of saying 'I'm going to build transit *here* (and not *there*) and it'll be paid for by [potentially unpopular source of revenue]' right out of the gate.

 

[Palma]

Ugh. Blah. She wants to go back to a dead transit plan in Scarborough. The province has committed to the subway. The only way the LRT can come back is if the NDP wins big in the next provincial election which won't happen. And from the sounds of it, she isn't going to push for the DRL to be the next major transit project. It basically sounds like she wants to push the DRL back and on put all of Transit City back on. Thanks, but no thanks to Olivia Chow as mayor. Give me Karen Stintz or John Tory who actually want to get the DRL going and not go back to revisit the Scarborough transit debate.

Why not transfer that money to the DRL which is needed more and go back to LRT for Scarborough?