October 13, 2003
"Write down the date November 11 on the wall where you can't help but see it," someone sage once advised me.
It was a long ago municipal election year and the someone sage was former city auditor Jack Rabinowitz. Every election year, my life is hell. Toronto Free Press, which zeroes in on the wasteful municipal level, is always on the forefront of civic politics and has been for 13 years. It isn't so much that TFP is all that formidable, it's that some civic politicians perceive it to be. That's enough for politicians to make municipal election time a circus. On days when it was becoming too much, Rabinowitz gave me the comforting advice that it would all be over the day after election. I've thought of his advice every election year since.
The current municipal election race is the worst I've ever seen.
Nonetheless it's teaching me a lot about human nature.
In this election, the much-admired Rabinowicz is Chief Financial Officer for Toronto mayoral candidate Tom Jakobek. As for myself, I seem to be the lone journalist on Jakobek's side.
…"It turns out that Beaches-East York MP Maria Minna is not--as campaign staff pronounced last week--on the Tom Jakobek bandwagon. Instead, Minna, the occasionally controversial Liberal ex-cabinet minister, is a supporter of Barbara Hall." Those words come from the Skinny, a regular Toronto Star feature.
In the same issue of the Minna defection, the Star most gleefully reported: Debates shunning Jakobek.
"Tom Jakobek has been crossed off the list by organizers of two Toronto mayoral debates planned for this week," boasted the Star.
"We wanted to invite those who actually had a chance to become Toronto's next mayor and we didn't feel Jakobek did," said Shelley Petrie, executive director of the Toronto Environmental Alliance, explaining why her group decided not to invite Jakobek to its Wednesday debate at 7 p.m., at the Great Hall, 1087 Queen St. W.
Wrong, Shelley. Your group isn't inviting Jakobek because he repeatedly stood up to it and other single interest groups when he was Toronto's budget chief.
TEA has for far too long been on the public teat. And as the recipient of monies from the public purse displays rampant hypocrisy in denying any candidate space on the podium during a mayoral debate.
"It's the first time Jakobek, embroiled in controversy in the ongoing MFP inquiry, has been shunned for mayoral debates," said the Star.
Wrong. The Star has been so unrelenting in its continuing hatched job on the budget chief that Jakobek was at least initially shunned in one other debate.
Yet when he swallowed his hurt to be there, he received hearty applause once having been afforded the opportunity to be heard.
The Toronto Star has not shunned Jakobek but tried to have him shut out as a candidate in the 2003 Toronto mayoral race.
Not because the former budget chief has been "embroiled in controversy in the ongoing MFP inquiry", but because he lied to a Toronto Star reporter about an out-of-town Toronto Leafs game.
The Star has been trying to prove that you do not lie to the media and get away with it in this town ever since. When this country's largest newspaper goes after prey, it can cost you. Just ask the Toronto Police Association and the Toronto Blue Jays, both smeared by the Star as racist.
But when the Toronto Star says "The Tom Jakobek team was hard-pressed to name even three prominent women last week who support him and now it's down to two," it's getting personal.
I am one of the two women supporting Jakobek. Not nearly as prominent as the Doris Andersons and Judy Rebicks supporting Barbara Hall and David Miller respectively, being the lowly editor of TFP/Canadafreepress.com, my support for Jakobek is as strong and as steadfast as it was unsolicited.
Why?
In spite of what the Star writes, I am convinced that Tom Jakobek is the best man to lead our city as mayor in these trying times.
This city was $2-billion in debt before SARS hit last summer, and the no-nonsense Tom Jakobek is the only one with the wherewithal to get us out of that debt without raising taxes.
When TJ was budget chief, he made lots of enemies when he delivered nine balanced budgets with zero tax increase, not the least of them the single interest groups who get so much whining space in the ever accommodating Star.
Other than lying to a Star reporter, for which he apologized profusely at the MFP inquiring, Tom Jakobek has done nothing wrong.
What he is doing is standing firmly in the way of the Toronto Star, which happens to be hell-bent on a mission to bring a left-wing mayor to Toronto City Hall.
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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