It really is foolish. There was a commentary the other day by Bob Hepburn of the Toronto Star that Toronto liberals are in a quandary about this year’s mayoralty race in their city. Bob is a bit early in suggesting that liberals need to make any decision. The problem for them is not to jump into this or that campaign. Their challenge is to find the right candidate for liberal-minded voters to support.
There is not one of the present or suspected candidates at this time who could meet any criteria for liberal support. Liberals might be losing organizational and fund-raising time but there is still plenty of time to field a better candidate for mayor.
And if you cannot find the perfect candidate by Labour Day, you can make some decisions. You can look at the situation in early September and you will have a darn good idea of who is going to win. If it is someone you can live with for the next four years, you can relax. You can save your funding and energy for the 2015 federal election—the one with important issues to fight.
If September comes and it looks like Ford is going to win, you have a problem. You better get to work for the one candidate who might beat him. A do-nothing Olivia Chow could be a better alternative to a destructive Rob Ford. That would be a non-liberal choice but it would save the city from further embarrassment. With Stintz, you have to hold your nose and hustle. She would seem like a breath of fresh air after Ford. Even John Tory might be past his best-before date but Toronto could relax a bit with four years of Tory.
But the problem is the city would go nowhere with any of those alternatives. Gridlock would continue to strangle a city without leadership. There would be no progress on transportation or serious infrastructure needs. The city would be spending much of its time on its knees at Queen’s Park and in Ottawa.
Toronto needs leadership. That is not what the usual suspects are offering. Leadership is a vision, a future, a city that knows where it is going. Those misfits and office-holders we seem stuck with on council should have little choice but to follow.
The ideal candidate for Toronto is a liberal. For Toronto is a liberal city. It is a melange of the old and the new. It looks to the future, not the past. It believes rather than destroys. It sets high standards. It can see the better future.
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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry
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