As Torontonians lick the envelope flaps for this year’s Christmas cards, the bagmen who control the mayor’s chair, are into less Yuletide-like pursuits. Having already decided on cable television executive John Tory as the candidate to replace Mayor Mel Lastman, the movers and shakers intend to spring him on the rest of us early in the New Year. These movers are the men who collect upwards of the $1 million now required to run a serious mayoral campaign.
Rogers Cable Inc. chief executive John Tory has no strings to Toronto City Hall, and Toronto voters have never elected a mayor that didn’t come from city hall. Tory’s handlers will lean heavily on the optics of a dysfunctional city hall to get around that. Even though a scapegoat has yet to be fingered at the current inquiry into the $101.8-million city/ MFP computer lease scandal, they know more than most that when it comes to John Q. Public, perception is everything.
Indeed, when one of two movers and shakers contacted by Toronto Free Press was asked whether another potential mayoral candidate was in any way at fault for the computer scandal, he answered no, but indicated that perhaps members of the public at large could be left with a different impression.
Since he would only agree to speak off the record, TFP cannot name him.
A second mover and shaker would not confirm Tory as the chosen candidate. "I can’t say I’m encouraging or discouraging him (Tory) at this time," said Paul Godfrey.
"I have had a number of potential candidates come to me. I’m not refusing anyone who wants to come to see me. At this point in time, I’m listening."
Godfrey, former Toronto Sun publisher now President of the Toronto Blue Jays, added that he is a "close personal friend and supporter" of current Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman.
Behind-the-scene municipal movers and shakers in Toronto have always operated with the confidence that they know what’s best for us.
How did the race for the chair of the city’s chief magistrate break wide open?
Lastman is poised to announce his intentions for November 2003’s civic election some time early in the New Year. Rumours that he won’t be in the mayor’s race are all but official.
Tory did not return TFP telephone calls requesting an interview.
While being groomed as a candidate by powerbrokers during the holiday season of 2002, the cable television executive--co-chair of Lastman’s last campaign as mayor--has run more than 20 political campaigns.
Big Rogers Cable name recognition notwithstanding, John Tory will be known forever at the federal level of politics: the campaign he ran that handed the Liberals their 1993 power thrust on a silver platter by decimating the then 126-year-old Conservative party, is the one that saddled average Canadians with the one-party state of the present day.
As Kim Campbell’s campaign manager, Tory led what the Ottawa Citizen called "the most disastrous political campaign in modern Canadian history". When it was over the Progressive Conservative Party, which had captured 211 seats in 1984, had been crushed, left with only two spots in the House of Commons.
Darts for Tory came in from all sides, including the Toronto Star, "for poisoning the politics of the campaign. The Conservative campaign director authorized the nauseatingly negative TV ad that mocked Liberal leader Jean Chretien’s facial disfigurement while a voice-over questioned his suitability to be PM. Beyond that blunder, Tory oversaw a string of attack ads that belittled Chretien, suggesting that he couldn’t count backwards."
In the aftermath of the mind-numbing disastrous campaign, members of Tory’s own party reacted to what they perceived to be a display of his further poor judgment.
They found it incredible that even as the results of the carnage were rolling in on election night, Tory was handing his headquarter staff buttons depicting the phoenix--the mystical bird that rose from the ashes.
Toronto’s powerbroker mayoral candidate is also on the public record for being a sore, if not a frightening loser.
At a post-election wake on the 15th floor of Conservative headquarters in Ottawa, he was told by George Hofsink, an aide in former cabinet minister Paul Dick’s office, he’d "never seen such an inept campaign in my life."
According to Jack Aubrey, of the Citizen, "Tory jabbed Hofsink’s chest with his finger. He told Hofsink a lot of people were to blame. Hofsink persisted, repeating several times. `You must take the blame for this, you must take the blame.’
"After seven weeks in an inhuman pressure cooker, Tory snapped and grabbed Hofsink by the shoulders with his thumbs at his neck and shook him, saying, `We’re all to blame. We’re all to blame. It is not only my fault.’"
For the past eight years, Tory has worked himself up as head of Canada’s largest cable television company. But coincidentally with mayoral ambitions, his relationship with Rogers Communications Inc. has been a matter of open speculation. Ted Rogers has extended his own contract as CEO to 2006, and there are rumours afoot that he plans to replace Tory with his 33-year-old son in January.
Tory was at the helm at Rogers when glitches in the company’s @Home cable service were making news.
In any case, things seem to be looking up for Rogers Cable Inc., which in 2003 will introduce a "pro" edition of its high-speed service for heavy users. "The software is being implemented as we speak," Tory told a Star business writer earlier this month.
Tory handlers envision the name recognition their candidate built up at Rogers Cable as an electible asset.
But cable is the make-believe world of television sitcom. Any man or woman who would be mayor must be rooted in the harsh realty of the City of Toronto’s whopping $2-billion debt.
Behind-the-scene wheeler-dealers now promoting Tory were successful in running campaigns to elect and re-elect Lastman, and for once soundly defeating Councillor Jack Layton with June Rowlands.
But as sure as powerbrokers get older, times in Toronto have changed.
Striking at the heart of the mayor’s race this time out is a well-orchestrated crusade of the left wing to recapture the chair they lost when Lastman defeated Barbara Hall.
Married to wealthy businessman and former Ontario Place Chairman Max Beck, Hall was off the mark before any other candidate, and has been actively campaigning for months, courtesy of a sizeable former campaign surplus.
Tory’s red streaks will not take away votes from candidates like Hall and lefty Councillor David Miller.
The clear and present danger here is that a mayoral campaign with more than one right of centre candidate virtually assures victory for Hall.
Meanwhile, the city’s movers and shakers are conducting polls and playing fast and loose with the results.
They deem who is electible and not electible. They count on the voting public buying into their perception-is-everything strategy.
The holiday season is a traditional time for reflection.
It will be Toronto’s Christmas blessing if powerbroker-backed mayoral candidate John Tory politely thanks the bagmen and decides not to run.
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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