jje1000
Senior Member
I agree 100% with the points that he makes and the Don't discount Ford. Defeating him will take more work than you think.
http://www.specialcircumstances.ca/why-rob-ford-will-win-in-2014
Why Rob Ford Will Win in 2014
the goggles do nothing
Michael A. Sims – Political consulting and other things.
November 24, 2013
Rob Ford is the favorite in the 2014 elections, and here I will explain why.
To begin, I want to talk to all the latte-sipping downtown elitists out there: that feeling you're having at this instant is called 'motivated reasoning'. You are searching for a reason to discredit the thesis statement of this article, because you don't like it and don't want it to be true. So you're going to read this piece with a jaundiced eye, looking for anything you can find to discredit it.
Stop it. I'm on your side. I don't want the thesis to be true either. I don't think Ford's a good mayor and I think he's a terrible human being (and Doug is even worse). Try to read this piece as written by someone who is unfortunately in the position of breaking some bad news to you, but regrets it.
Recent polling (and this is shortly after he's been stripped of most mayoral powers, if you're reading this later on after he's done still more crazy things) has Ford at 42% approval, with 33% of the public wanting to vote for him today. This is pretty much Ford's lowest polling results, ever. It's rock-bottom for him. And still, 33% of the public actively wants to vote for him and another 9% approves of the job he's doing and obviously would be open to voting for him if he got his act together a little bit. What these polls mean is that IF the election were held today (it isn't) and IF Ford was facing only 1 or 2 opponents (he won't be), THEN Ford would be in trouble. But... so what? The election isn't today and Ford won't be facing just one or two opponents.
Contrast with the 2010 election: George Smitherman managed to get 36% of the public to vote for him, after a lengthy campaign. Ford has almost that much in the bag before the campaign starts.
Ford has very nearly enough votes to win today, and his numbers can only go up from here. With incumbency and a massive media platform, he can say anything he wants and have it broadcast worldwide (although it only needs to be Toronto-wide). He will have a fully-funded campaign, $1.3 million to spend on electioneering, although with 50 camera crews (not an exaggeration) following him around daily, he doesn't even need money for campaigning.
His opponents: many of them (works against them), no money (works against them) no media platform (works hugely against them), much less name recognition (works against them), boring (works against them).
The advantage of being able to say anything you want and have it broadcast on every nightly newscast is incalculably large. Olivia Chow will be paying a fortune to make a few 30-second TV spots, to get a few short blurbs broadcast to the public about her. Ford just walks into a room and starts talking and all the cameras focus on him, and his statement, however long it is, runs live and gets repeated that evening. For free.
Ford is sucking up all the oxygen. If Olivia Chow releases a perfectly sane and competent 900-page policy paper about all the great things she'll do for Toronto, and on the same day Rob Ford says something (anything), you know how much media coverage she'll get? None. Zero. They don't have time left in the newscast after covering Ford's antics. Most of the city will be barely aware that she's running for office. And this holds true for all the other candidates as well. Rob Ford is a rock star now. He's a celebrity. He's a news-maker. His media ratings are off the charts. He's Mick Jagger, he's Lady Gaga. He's the royal baby and Princess Diana wrapped up in one. You can't walk around the second floor of Toronto city hall because the camera crews are blocking it - every day.
And people vote for celebrities.
Here's what the election will boil down to:
Candidate A: Rock star, says he saved you a billion dollars, you see him on the TV every day and in the newspaper every day, some people dislike him
Candidate B/C/D/E/F/G: you've never seen her face, never read a story about her, you heard she's supposed to be competent
When rock stars go up against nobodies, rock stars win every time. Who are you going to vote for, the guy who saved you a billion dollars or the NDP socialist union fat-cat latte-sipping elitist Olivia Chow who's going to raise your taxes and give it all to the downtown? (Ford gets to define the terms of the election, you see, so those will be the terms - his terms.)
"I'm going to stop the NDP from raising your taxes!" {cheers}
Here's the equation:
(people who will vote for Ford because he's their guy and he'll stick it to the latte-sipping elites) + (people who will vote for Ford because he saved them a billion dollars) + (people who will vote for Ford because they see him on TV every day) = more than enough to win
For Chow (or anyone) to have a chance, they need money, they need media, they need their own rock star, and they need to be able to define the terms of the election. And they don't have any of those things.
Ford and Smitherman were the only two candidates to run fully-funded campaigns in 2010. Pantalone - long-time deputy mayor, and by all accounts an honest and decent person, with the softest hands I've ever shaken - only raised about half of what would be needed for a fully-funded campaign. Rossi actually raised more money than Pantalone, but everyone else raised much less. And these were 'serious' candidates, who tried hard, hired professional fundraisers, and so on. What I'm saying is that coming up with $1.3 million to spend on a campaign is not trivial. Even if one or more candidates other than Ford manages it, it won't be easy - they'll manage it by spending months schmoozing with rich people, and during that time, Ford will be taking his case to the public and telling them he saved them a billion dollars (which isn't true, but as far as the public is concerned, it will be by the time the campaign is over, because they'll have heard it so often).
So most of the candidates won't have fully-funded campaigns, and if they do, it will only be by spending a lot of time out of the public eye. But most importantly, none of them are rock stars. No one whose name has been mentioned as a mayoral candidate has 1/10th, heck, 1/100th the public profile that Ford has. None of them are being followed around by TV cameras. And none of them even have the personality to begin to cultivate such a following. They don't know how to be rock stars. And that, in the end, may be their biggest problem.
Here's what has to happen for an anti-Ford campaign to be successful:
Few candidates. The fewer the better. Somehow, as many as possible of the potential mayoral candidates need to be convinced to drop out or not run.
Celebrity, populist campaigning. This doesn't mean copy Ford's anti-tax message. Don't do that, because it will just come across as fake. It does mean 'become a rock star'. Must have a message that resonates with the public, not boring policy papers.
Must take Ford on directly. Must call him a liar, to his face, repeatedly. That's what he is, but if no one says it because they're too polite, Ford wins.
Must stop Ford from sucking up all the oxygen, and the only way to do that is to give the media a show that rivals his.
Let me close with a quote from the 2010 campaign:
"It was the most powerful thing I'd ever seen," recalls [Smitherman] campaign manager Bruce Davis. "People knew [Mr. Ford] had these character flaws. They knew all that …" And, by all appearances, they didn't care.
Ford is actually a brilliant populist, who also happens to be crippled by being a drug and alcohol addict, being a congenital liar, and having a terrible family. Imagine if he didn't have those handicaps! Don't count him out. The best Toronto can hope for is that there's only one serious candidate running against him and that candidate manages to eke out a narrow victory. But if the city is not extremely lucky, we're looking at Ford more years.
http://www.specialcircumstances.ca/why-rob-ford-will-win-in-2014
