TORONTO — Enough with the crack smoking, public drunkenness and outrageous behavior. After four years in which City Hall has sometimes been as entertaining as a circus sideshow, Toronto residents appear eager for something altogether different in their mayor: DULL.
Voters head to the polls Monday to elect a successor to Rob Ford, who announced last month that he would not seek re-election as he battles a rare and difficult form of cancer. His brother, city councilor Doug Ford, is running in his place but is widely expected to lose to John Tory, a wealthy, straight-laced moderate conservative who stands in contrast to the pugnacious, populist Ford brothers.
Analysts say Olivia Chow, a leftist candidate and the widow of late popular Canadian politician Jack Layton, seems to have lost momentum as a candidate as people look to vote strategically to ensure Doug Ford doesn’t win.
City Councilor Jaye Robinson, a one-time Ford ally who is now supporting Tory, said folks just want to make sure a Ford isn’t mayor.
“People are literally counting down. Every door I go to, they are counting down. They are feeling that this is going to be transformative moment in our city where we right the ship, we focus on city building and we leave the sideshow, the circus, the distractions behind,” Robinson said. If Tory wins, she said, “there will be a collective sigh of relief across the entire city.”
A record 161,147 people turned out for early voting this month, more than double the number in the last election, in 2010. Among them was Kaye Wilkinson, a retiree who lives in Etobicoke, the middle-class western Toronto suburb that is home to the Ford family.
“We have to get rid of the Fords. I don’t care who is running,” Wilkinson said. “The top runner, we don’t care what their policies are, but we wanted to make sure we got rid of the Fords.”
Marianne Davis, 62, a retired principal who lives in Etobicoke, also voted early.
“I’m tired of all the shenanigans that have been going on at City Hall so I voted for Tory,” Davis said. “I get tired of traveling and people asking me about my mayor.”
Ford’s tenure as mayor of Canada’s largest city was marred by his drinking problems and illegal drug use. He was repeatedly videotaped and photographed while intoxicated in public.
After months of denials, the mayor in 2013 acknowledged he had smoked crack cocaine in one of his “drunken stupors,” but he refused to resign. The City Council stripped Ford of most of his powers but lacked the authority to force him out of office because he wasn’t convicted of a crime.