2014 Municipal Election: Toronto Mayoral Race

[howl]

What it has come to:

LEFT: Spend money raised on measures that benefit everyone, and especially the most vulnerable (i.e. improvements to transportation infrastructure that move people most efficiently, community centres, social housing, etc).

RIGHT: Spend money making it easier for the upper middle classes to amass wealth (subsidise their driving habits in like a million ways, try to reduce fees and property taxes as much as possible, etc).

This is why someone like Bloomberg, who is not particularly leftist in his ideological worldviews, came across as being a rather lefty mayor of New York.

The obvious problem with the Left-Right labels are they are way too simplistic. People try to paste the Right-Left labels onto candidates in order to sell them to a certain constituency - e.g. the voters who really don't understand the issues and just vote for right or left depending on which newspaper they read. Its not really a helpful characterization in an insightful or (somewhat) sophisticated political discussion, particularly at the municipal level.

A more accurate way to break down the candidates is to rank them on a number of different issues or criteria. For example, fiscal policy, social policy, moral policy, infrastructure policy etc. In the end what you'll likely find is there is no clear Left or Right candidates, and that in many of these categories the candidates the media are calling Right support policies that are actually more Left and vice versa,

 

[nrb]

I don't think it's really fair to say that right/left labels are only useful for voters who don't understand issues. It's useful for anyone who is voting based on general values. If you are voting based on a more specific issue or criteria perhaps it's less clear (ex, single issue voters who elected rob ford based on taxes and ending the "gravy train".)

But I would like someone for mayor who shares my own progressive values and I will vote for the closest candidate. These values can certainly be classified on a political spectrum..

 

[christiesplits]

Olivia Chow all set to enter Toronto mayoral race: Hepburn

After a year of careful preparation, Olivia Chow is finally ready to enter what is fast shaping up as a tough race to become Toronto’s next mayor.

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/comm...et_to_enter_toronto_mayoral_race_hepburn.html

 

[innsertnamehere]

Godspeed! looking forward to her platform.

 

[WislaHD]

I'm real interested on what Olivia Chow's platform will look like. You'd expect a few of the things she'll have (such as transit) to be contradictory to Horvath.

 

[Admiral Beez]

A bold female mayor could be great. Does anyone remember anything Hall or Rolands accomplished?

 

[Silence&Motion]

A bold female mayor could be great. Does anyone remember anything Hall or Rolands accomplished?

Between the recession, the Harris Tories, and the Chretien Liberals, basically nothing was or could be accomplished in Toronto in the 1990s.

 

[adma]

A bold female mayor could be great. Does anyone remember anything Hall or Rolands accomplished?

I read that "Rowlands" misspelling as "Rolaids";-)

As for Hall, she actually *did* accomplish, or set the foundation for accomplishing, quite a bit in her tenure, esp. when it came to municipal planning...
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2012/09/09/hume_how_barbara_hall_made_toronto_better.html
Were her tenure not cut short by megaamalgamation, we'd probably be speaking a lot more of her. (And for her, a first-termer who surprise-squeaked ahead of Rowlands, to fare as well as she did vs Lastman in '97 tells you a lot of what "might have been".)

 

[Silence&Motion]

I read that "Rowlands" misspelling as "Rolaids";-)

As for Hall, she actually *did* accomplish, or set the foundation for accomplishing, quite a bit in her tenure, esp. when it came to municipal planning...
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2012/09/09/hume_how_barbara_hall_made_toronto_better.html
Were her tenure not cut short by megaamalgamation, we'd probably be speaking a lot more of her. (And for her, a first-termer who surprise-squeaked ahead of Rowlands, to fare as well as she did vs Lastman in '97 tells you a lot of what "might have been".)

Thanks for posting the link. I didn't realize the King West plan was a product of her tenure. I always associated that initiative with Jack Layton when he was a councillor for King West back in the 1980s.

Either way, it's interesting to compare the success of that plan with Lastman's attempt to turn North York Centre into a major hub of employment. On the topic of Left vs. Right in municipal politics, it's ironic how the Left are sometimes the ones that put their faith in the market to produce thriving neighbourhoods (in the tradition of Jane Jacobs), whereas the Right are the ones obsessed with funding mega-projects like the Skydome and the Olympics.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

I look forward to seeing Chow's ambitious campaign. I'm rather disappointed by the other candidates plans, especially on the transit issue.

 

[golodhendil]

Was talking to a fellow Torontonian colleague today and the topic of the mayoral election came up. Now this person is a fairly typical well-educated bike-riding downtown "elitist", despises Rob Ford, and staunchly liberal/progressive. But she also said that she doesn't like Olivia Chow. When I asked why, she said that from an experience listening to Chow speaking at UofT a few years ago, she found Chow to be somewhat impersonable, evasive when responding to questions and gave stock, noncommittal answers. Now to be fair, this colleague of mine isn't particularly tuned in to TO/Cdn politics especially after moving down here for work, and wasn't even aware that John Tory (whom she considers a "douche bag") has already declared he is running. But if this is indeed the kind of impression that Chow gives to even some (not too politically involved) progressives, then there's quite a bit of work to do.

 

[Silence&Motion]

Was talking to a fellow Torontonian colleague today and the topic of the mayoral election came up. Now this person is a fairly typical well-educated bike-riding downtown "elitist", despises Rob Ford, and staunchly liberal/progressive. But she also said that she doesn't like Olivia Chow. When I asked why, she said that from an experience listening to Chow speaking at UofT a few years ago, she found Chow to be somewhat impersonable, evasive when responding to questions and gave stock, noncommittal answers. Now to be fair, this colleague of mine isn't particularly tuned in to TO/Cdn politics especially after moving down here for work, and wasn't even aware that John Tory (whom she considers a "douche bag") has already declared he is running. But if this is indeed the kind of impression that Chow gives to even some (not too politically involved) progressives, then there's quite a bit of work to do.

Sounds like your "not too politically involved" friend just doesn't like politicians very much. Nonetheless, Chow definitely lacks the same kind of charisma that her late husband was known for. Then again, our romanticized image of Layton overlooks the fact that he was easily likened to a slick used car dealer during most of his political career.

 

[VTB]

A bold female mayor could be great. Does anyone remember anything Hall or Rolands accomplished?

Hall was instrumental in loosening up the archaic zoning bylaws which resulted in the two Kings, West and East. Downtown Toronto would not be what it is today without those key changes.

 

[adma]

Thanks for posting the link. I didn't realize the King West plan was a product of her tenure. I always associated that initiative with Jack Layton when he was a councillor for King West back in the 1980s.

Given that Hall was still commonly identified with Council's "NDP caucus" in the mid-90s (though she was already swinging distinctly centre-ward--something that helped in her election), one might claim that Layton's efforts helped midwife the initiative...

 

[golodhendil]

Sounds like your "not too politically involved" friend just doesn't like politicians very much. Nonetheless, Chow definitely lacks the same kind of charisma that her late husband was known for. Then again, our romanticized image of Layton overlooks the fact that he was easily likened to a slick used car dealer during most of his political career.

Perhaps. But she did say she liked Bob Rae (was in his riding), found him to be frank and to-the-point.