Cracks forming in Ford’s support base?
Early polls suggest mayor’s voters might be wobbling, but one diehard says bond intact
ZOE MCKNIGHT In campaign focus groups, Mayor Rob Ford’s core supporters were reporting wavering loyalty before the latest scandal hit. New poll numbers show his popularity and chances for re-election have taken a bigger hit in the wake of new recordings of the mayor apparently inebriated and making vulgar comments about women and ethnic slurs. Ford was elected in 2011 with 47 per cent of the vote. In a mid-April poll, 27 per cent of voters said they would vote for him, well behind Olivia Chow at 34 per cent. In a November poll, one day after the mayor admitted to smoking crack cocaine, 32 per cent of voters said they would still vote for the mayor if he went to rehab. A poll conducted Thursday and released Friday by Forum Research Inc. shows 22 per cent would vote for Ford, behind Chow and John Tory. The survey of 888 voting-age Torontonians is considered accurate within 3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. Many longtime supporters now find themselves conflicted, said political analyst and public affairs consultant Robin Sears, who is close to the campaigns of Chow, Tory and Karen Stintz and has knowledge of the focus groups.
“Yes, his base still exists at some level, but it’s smaller than it was six months ago, and a lot smaller than it was a year ago,” Sears said.
They don’t want to publicly denounce Ford or abandon him but have acknowledged he needs help to overcome his addiction, Sears said.
Ford’s troubles re-emerged in a new video seen by a Star reporter in which he appears to be inhaling crack cocaine from a copper pipe, and an audio recording of a drunken rant obtained by the Toronto Sun in which he deprecates his wife and speaks in sexual terms about mayoral candidate Stintz. She later said she was “disappointed by the misogynistic language used by Mayor Ford,” and said his comments were “disgusting.”
Sears said Ford’s support comes not only from voters who want low taxes but also from social conservatives such as new Canadians with deep religious convictions and those who follow him for his populist appeal.
But they may not be able to stick with him this time.
“There’s a Jekyll and Hyde effect. When he is under the influence he becomes something very much less attractive and almost frightening, in a way, if you’re the parents of daughters,” Sears said. “And that duality has finally emerged in a way that is unsustainable for him politically.”
The Forum Research poll from April described Ford loyalists as middle-aged suburban men with lower incomes and less education. But the image of the “angry working-class white guy” supporting Ford is oversimplified, Sears said. “There is a significant chunk of Ford Nation which is not ideologically conservative, or driven by a fiscal conservatism, so much as it is by an anti-establishment, populist, support-for-the-little-guy kind of politics.”
He sees Ford’s “gravy train” and “subways, subways, subways,” rheto- ric as shorthand for voter alienation in the suburbs in areas such as Scarborough and a sense the downtown elite candidates don’t know or care about suburban issues.
Neil Flagg, a staunch Ford supporter who runs the Facebook page I Hate the War on Mayor Rob Ford, isn’t ready to give up on Ford just yet. A surreptitiously recorded private conversation doesn’t prove Ford can’t carry on as mayor, he said.
“I give him a pass on that,” said Flagg, 42, who lives in midtown but works in Etobicoke. “This is private conversations over a beer.”
Only public financial dishonesty, not personal issues, could break his support, Flagg said. Part of Ford’s populist appeal — despite numerous derogatory statements directed at women and minorities — is that “he’s a good person and he actually loves these people,” Flagg said. “He helps them with their problems and invites them to his barbecues.”
If Ford — who stepped away from the mayor’s office and his own campaign after admitting to his drinking problem Wednesday night — doesn’t continue his campaign, Flagg doesn’t see a viable alternative.
Chow, Tory, Stintz and David Sok- nacki all represent the political elite that Ford and his supporters have vehemently opposed, Flagg said. “If not Ford, then Ford Nation is going to find some other vessel. But Ford Nation is not going anywhere, as far as the agenda goes.” Friday’s poll also showed the vast majority — 86 per cent — of Ford voters do not have a second choice. Forum Research pollster Lorne Bozinoff said the other candidates are unattractive to Ford’s base. “You’ve got them or a very flawed champion,” he said. “There’s nowhere for the Ford Nation to go.” Even if Ford returns, contrite, to focus on the gravy train and not his personal baggage, winning the October election may no longer be possible, Bozinoff said. “It’s going to be difficult because of the outrageousness of the comments. It’s going to be hard for people to forget that.” In Etobicoke, Ford support has remained roughly the same since last month, before the latest scandal: 49 per cent approved then, compared to 45 per cent now. But support has dropped dramatically in Scarborough, from 60 to 47 per cent, and in North York, from 54 to 38 per cent approval. “If you want to win in this city you have to win in Scarborough and North York,” said University of Toronto political scientist Zack Taylor, who studies municipal elections. “We’re seeing regionally, in the old Metro suburbs, places that were favourable to him seem to be moving at least in the moment to be moving away from him.” Andray Anthony Domise, who is not a Ford voter, was raised in a Jamaican family in Rexdale. He’s now running in Ward 2 — Etobicoke North, where Ford and his brother Doug have both won seats. Domise recently published an essay that tries to unpack Ford’s enduring support in the place he grew up. “We’re used to dealing with people who come to our communities with a bunch of platitudes and ideas about diversity and inclusion and this wonderful stuff, and we never see any fruits of that,” he said. Ford is known to knock on doors there, and that one-on-one contact with voters where others don’t bother means something, Domise said. “When someone shows up and talks to you, it gives you that human touch. It makes you think someone cares about you as an individual.”