‘Ford Nation’ is bigger than you think
Let us accept, from the very start, that the mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford appears unfit for public office. His personal problems and obvious lack of self-control — reading at the wheel of his car, going to KFC while on a highlypublicized diet, showing up drunk at public functions — are a source of considerable embarrassment inside and outside of the city. He hangs out with drug dealers, and — if reports of a video showing him smoking crack cocaine are reliable — he has a drug problem.
Even if we set this aside, and look at his policies and political agenda, he’s a disaster. Rob Ford lacks a coherent, consistent plan for the development of transit in Toronto. On files of central concern, he appears poorly briefed or plainly ignorant. He is in over his head.
Yet, despite all of this, Ford still enjoys the support of somewhere between a third to a half of Torontonians polled. How can this be?
From the beginning of his campaign for the mayoralty, the media coverage of Ford has betrayed a distinct snobbery and even a contempt. After all, who could support such an overweight lout, and one from Etobicoke at that?
We are constantly reminded that Ford draws his support from the “suburbs,” from the parts of Toronto that were grafted onto Old Toronto by Mike Harris and which now act as a drain on the city’s tax base and its transit system. Ford’s supporters are those who clog downtown streets when they drive in to work.
His supporters are not the sensible Torontonians who live in downtown condos or the surrounding leafy neighbourhoods. Those Torontonians take transit to work, or bike. They are urbane and multicultural. They are progressive, having supported Ford’s final opponents, George Smitherman and Joe Pantalone, en masse.
Except that they aren’t. The reality is that Ford’s support was widespread, even if it was strongest in Etobicoke and Scarborough. Of Toronto’s 44 wards, Ford won the plurality of votes in all but 13. His poorest showing was still a respectable 22 per cent. He was outpaced by the left-wing Pantalone in just one ward.
Ford’s performance is equally impressive if stacked up against his predecessors. His vote appears more widely spread than David Miller’s was in either of his elections. It is likewise broader than that earned by either John Tory or Barbara Hall in their failed bids. The only candidate to match him on city-wide support was the great sophisticate Mel Lastman, in his 2000 re-election.
The second reality is that Toronto exists as a multicultural place more plainly and vibrantly in those unwanted boroughs — Etobicoke and Scarborough — than in the central parts of Toronto.
And in those places, Ford’s support remains impressively strong.
Despite these realities, Ford and his supporters are treated contemptuously, and have been from the beginning of his mayoralty. This scorn comes in two forms.
First, in the plain double standard the media have applied in dealing with Ford. Second, and more subtly, in the manner in which his coalition of supporters is described.
On the first point, there is no doubt that Ford has been treated with a much less even hand than any of his predecessors or his contemporaries. At turns, the coverage has been unprofessional, uncharitable, amateur, and mean. Consider two examples.
In May 2012, Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star was tasked to investigate an attempt by Ford to purchase municipal property adjacent his house and the street on which it fronts. This famously turned into a story when Ford confronted Dale, in the property behind his house rather than beside it, taking photos with an iPhone. Ford’s neighbour claims to have seen Dale taking photos of Ford’s yard. Ford confronted Dale and Dale fled. A reporter is found in the wrong place, ill-equipped, and allegedly taking photos of the mayor’s yard. Who is the amateur in this case? Who is in the wrong?
Consider too the now-infamous visit of Mary Walsh, in the guise of her comedic alter ego Marg Delahunty. Accosted outside his home in the early morning, Ford perhaps overreacted, retreating inside and calling the police. How could he not know this giant of comedy yelling in his driveway? Yet, the obvious question comes: What other politicians have been visited by Miss Delahunty at their home? None. For those who have been graced by her charms outside of a legislature or parliament, how many lacked a heads up to the politician’s staff? I suspect the answer is also none.
But it is not just the mayor who is held in contempt. It is also his supporters. Consider a recent exchange between the CBC’s As It Happens and a Ford supporter.
On May 31, Carol Off interviewed a resident of the towers where the alleged crack video was said to be stashed. How, asked Off, could she support Ford after all of his antics? As it happens, this particular citizen regularly travels to her local Walmart in her powered wheelchair to have her prescriptions filled.
When her normal route was inaccessible because of road construction, she called then-councillor Ford. He addressed the problem on the same day.
For all the irrational reasons voters show loyalty to politicians, this is not one. And yet Off’s incredulity continued. How exactly could this woman support Ford? Who is confused in this case?
Rob Ford’s Toronto — a city of neighbourhoods where people drive to their jobs and receive wages somewhere near the median — is as much a part of the city as the downtown enclaves where professors and journalists work. But reality too often gives way to rhetoric. Those who support Ford are surely left with the impression that they are dismissed for the same reasons Ford is dismissed, and was counted out from the very beginning.
As they would be for most people, the demands of the mayor’s office are too much for Rob Ford. One can see it in his actions in the office and outside of it, day and night.
Voters would do well to see him replaced at the next election. But let’s not be surprised if they ignore the advice to do so by those who think they were stupid in the first place.