Hi all,
No polls, no predictions just a few thoughts about how Toronto elects a mayor.
The question I keep getting is whether the Toronto mayoral race is too long. Is a full 10-month campaign necessary? Why is an Ontario or federal campaign about six weeks but in Toronto the debates start in March and just keep on keeping on.
Well, yes, I do think the campaign is too long. Surely it could start on July 1 instead of the first working day in January. You can bet the house that January to July would be filled with posturing, speculating and politicking. Enough fodder to fill newspapers and news programs a few times over. But let’s do nothing, absolutely nothing, to curtail what is a remarkable example of electoral politics.
Think back to this past spring’s Ontario election. Can you think of one instance where Kathleen Wynne, Tim Hudak or Andrea Horwath sat in a room of Ontarians who were allowed to walk in and spend a couple of hours asking them any question they wanted? Sure the candidates held individual town halls but they were in carefully selected communities with as many in the audience as possible chosen by party organizers. Yes, there was a debate, one debate, produced by the TV networks with no audience in a sealed TV studio.
Now think ahead to the coming federal election. In exactly 12 months, Canada will elect a new government. That campaign next fall will also keep the voter well away from the leaders of Canada’s political parties. The leaders of all federal parties have long kept themselves in a bubble protected from you, the voter, getting too close. Let’s not forget campaign professionals measure their success by getting positive headlines from controlled photo ops that keep any and all risk out of the moment. That means controlling access and choosing who is in the room at any time. The attack we’ve seen this week on Parliament Hill and the security threat that now shrouds our country will likely mean next year each of the federal leaders’ campaigns will be hermetically sealed. The security concerns are legitimate but there is a real price paid to the conduct of electoral politics.
Now, before it fades from memory, consider the Toronto mayoral election. About 50 debates held in halls across the city – one day in a community favouring one candidate then the next day in a different part of the city leaning to the views of another candidate. Each meeting with its own format, its own dynamic and its own, sometimes peculiar, rules. One morning it’s a room filled with men and women representing real estate interests cheering Doug Ford’s tax promises while John Tory and Olivia Chow get the cold shoulder. Or a Friday evening in a church basement before a very different audience Ford is forced to answer an advocate for the homeless about voting against money for a homeless program. At that meeting Chow is the beneficiary of a sustained round of applause speaking with passion about the social policies she presented throughout the campaign. Anyone can watch in one community hall after another John Tory, as the man to catch, attacked from both sides he sticks to his message despite the repeated barbs from Ford and Chow. And just try and skip a debate! Missing a meeting has consequences. The candidate’s motives are questioned and, in turn, debated. The media focus zooms in on why Ford or Tory (rarely, if ever Chow) decide they have other plans.
The community sessions, debates, meetings usually come at the end of campaign days that begin around 8 a.m. and are crammed with other appearances but the media are guaranteed to turn out night after night watching, waiting for one moment that might be a headline. Watching it unfold one appreciates the gruelling schedule that tests the stamina and skills of the candidates. What if opening up the rules to shorten the campaign, to say four months, also opens up a lobbying by the political pros to reduce the number of debates? To put constraints on where these community meetings can be held and where? Let’s not put limits on this exercise in democracy. If the cost to preserving a free-wheeling campaign is firing off the starting gun on the first work day in January – so be it.
