Out in Left-Centre Field

He's finally done it, done what the polls have said he was on track to do for months now -- Rob Ford is the next mayor of Toronto.

(This is not to overlook all the other municipalities in Ontario, including my hometown of Oakville, where the citizens have voted -- often in surprising ways -- to elect their local leaders for the next four years. But the race in Toronto was a high-profile, hard-fought campaign, and I intend to give it what due I can.)

Whatever I think of his policies, Mr. Ford clearly ran the best campaign. Divisive and fuelled by anger it may have been, but his rise was a reflection of the people's democratic will to choose. They liked what they saw, and they trusted him with their vote.

Now, he must live up to his end of the great electoral bargain. Mr. Ford needs to prove that he can govern Toronto for all citizens, not just the views of those who supported him and his platform. He has the duty and responsibility to treat leadership with the seriousness it deserves -- and that means bringing people together instead of wedging them apart.

His opponents were clearly not up to the task. Joe Pantalone ran as best he could, but his position as the direct defender of David Miller's admittedly dicey record limited what he could do. Plus, Pantalone is not Miller; despite their similarities in policy, they are different people with different styles of leadership. Mr. Pantalone failed to show himself as a distinct leader with a compelling vision; you do not succeed on your own by being a clone of someone else.

As for Rocco Rossi and Sarah Thompson, we will never know how they might have fared. Interesting and articulate as they were, neither had the will to stay in the race until the end, but they instead allowed outside pressures to browbeat them into submission for the "good" of the other candidates. Any day that choice in democracy is forcibly lessened is a sad day, and those who pressured them into an early departure should be ashamed.

George Smitherman, too, was ultimately defeated. Whether it was his spotty record as part of McGuinty's government, or his failure to define himself and his platform in the campaign, who knows? His list of backers, from councillors across Toronto to former mayor David Crombie, was impressive indeed -- but ultimately, it is the people who choose the mayor, not the high-profile endorsers. In the end, Smitherman's desperate and entirely transparent bid, in the final days of the campaign, to bully Pantalone's supporters into jumping on the bandwagon rang all kinds of hollow. If you look at the results, Smitherman's "big red tent" would have had to absorb all (i.e. almost 100%) of Pantalone's supporters just to have even a tiny margin of victory. Ford beat Smitherman, pure and simple, and the man who first waltzed into the campaign with a commanding lead was the eventual victim of a fatal cocktail of personal complacency, campaign team overconfidence and overall public anger.

And there were almost 40 others who tried and could not succeed. Sadly, we heard virtually nothing about them, courtesy of the mass media, who decided to arbitrarily narrow the field of "newsworthy" candidates to about half a dozen early this year, and virtually imposed a publication ban on the rest. Who knows how candidates like Rocco Achampong or Kevin Clarke might have fared, had the media given them as much free publicity as the anointed front-runners? But apparently, diversity and fairness are beyond the capabilities of the large news outlets of today. Certainly, it is nigh impossible to deal with 40 candidates at one debate -- but when you have 5 candidates at every debate, which approach is more wrong? The media have no right to tell YOU who gets your vote.

Because that's what this was about: choice. The free will to use your greatest opportunity to have an impact on the political scene in any manner that you see fit. It's not a chore, it's not an inconvenience; it's our right and our duty to vote so that our communities are given direction for the next four years. Whatever your beliefs and principles, you came together today to show that you care about the things that influence your life and your country. Thank you.

So congratulations, Mr. Ford. Congratulations to all the thousands of people, from all walks of life, who had the courage to seek (and, in some cases, win) the honour of serving your fellow citizens in municipal governments across Ontario.

Believe me, we're all watching. Make us proud.