Toronto's invincible mayoral candidate

He’s an anti-immigration candidate in a multicultural city, a law and order politician who’s been arrested for drunk driving. Why is Rob for still ahead in the polls?

The Toronto Star is reporting a stunning misstep by leading Toronto mayoral candidate Rob Ford. Apparently, when a voter emailed Ford to ask about his plans for the city’s bike lanes, she received a reply from the candidate that actually said, “insert vague policy response here.”

It is only the latest, and most hilarious, gaffe from a candidate who has seemingly done everything wrong and yet is still leading the rest of the field. He’s called for an end to immigration to one of the world’s most multicultural cities, lied about being arrested for drunk driving, and been sanctioned by the city ethics commissioner for improperly soliciting funds.

The prevailing logic for his popularity is that Toronto is bankrupt and Ford’s single-plank platform of slashing budgets is appealing to voters. Outgoing Mayor David Miller and his allies “drove taxpayers to this point with their complete disdain for anyone who didn’t see the world their way and for their blatant disregard of the bottom line,” says the Toronto Sun’s Sue-Anne Levy.

It doesn’t seem to matter that Ford’s immigration policy would be disastrous for a city with a shrinking birth rate, as pointed out recently by Myer Siemiatycki in the Mark. Or that the supposedly thrifty candidate recently voted to build the world’s tallest flagpole in northern Toronto.

Ford appears to be riding the wave of an anti-intellectual political movement, exemplified by the pro-Ford columns of the Globe and Mail’s Christie Blatchford, who revels in the “panic that now grips Toronto’s political class at the prospect that Rob Ford” will end “‘the gravy train’ at City Hall.” She rails against “the smart people” who support Miller, while lauding “the rest of us” who “see through the B.S. pretty quickly.”

Blatchford’s Globe colleague Marcus Gee is among that panicked political class, and writes, “wake up Toronto – these things matter.” Given Ford’s record, Gee writes, his continued popularity is “appalling.”