Former councillor wants old job back
After provincial loss, Shelley Carroll seeks council comeback
Former Ward 33 councillor Shelley Carroll is stepping back into politics to run for her old job on Toronto council.
Carroll resigned her seat this spring to run — unsuccessfully — for the Ontario Liberal Party in Don Valley North in the June 7 provincial election.
On July 6, Carroll registered to run in the new Ward 31, which comprises the entirety of her former ward, to return to Toronto council.
In an interview, Carroll said that she had come to the decision to attempt to return to Toronto council after considering calls to register as a late candidate in the mayoralty race against John Tory.
“There were people that really wanted me to try that, but at the end of the day, I don’t think it is feasible and I don’t think it serves the city right now to have a last-minute explosion of a mayoralty race,” she said.
“I listened — I heard them out — but at the end of the day, what I’m most concerned about right now are the things that concerned me in the provincial race. I have done a lot of work in a specific place in Toronto and in my ward, and I want to be in my council seat, if not a pro- vincial seat, to be there for the residents.”
Carroll said that she spent several weeks after her provincial defeat deciding on her course of action, and ultimately made up her mind on a long-distance swim on July 4.
“I had people ready to roll and already working on a campaign framework to prove to me they could do a campaign for council, and another group of people assembling a team to see if they could convince me to run for mayor ... and I thought about it while I was doing the Australian crawl,” she said. “I came back and said I made my decision.”
Carroll was one of two Toronto councillors who resigned their seats after winning a nomination to run in the June 7 provincial election. Ward 41 Councillor Chin Lee resigned his seat to face off against Raymond Cho in Scarborough North. Ward 34 Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong ran for the Progressive Conservatives and also lost, but he didn’t resign his seat on Toronto council.
Carroll defended her decision to resign her seat, and accept a severance payout that amounted to a year’s pay, only to return again.
“I think that people prefer that you resign if you’re going to run for another office — not be half in and half out,” said Carroll.
She also noted that under rules council established for itself, her decision to take the severance in 2018 is a one-time thing.
“Once you collect it you can never collect it again,” she said. “That’s a risk I took using it this time as opposed to waiting until my full retirement.”
Carroll is so far running against three candidates: Stella Kargiannakis, Ken Lister and Christina Liu.