Character matters more than credentials for mayor
If you have interviewed many candidates in recruitment or in politics you probably came anyway with this insight: character should always outweigh credentials. Character is usually strengthened over time and has meant showing great courage against long odds.
In politics, character is often revealed by supple coalition-building skills and the ability to maintain a sharp focus, in the face of noise on all fronts. A councillor who wants to be mayor solely on the strength of their two-term credentials is not qualified. If elected, most fail. Being a good shouter and a one-man-band as a celebrity councillor are not useful qualities in a mayor, viz. Rob Ford.
Then there are those whose credentials should disqualify their candidacy. Anyone who has a large and ongoing commercial connection to the city — a telecom executive, perhaps — should stand aside. Anyone who has served as chief of police chief should, too.
Remember Julian Fantino’s troublesome years as chief and his stunning collapse as a federal cabinet minister? Imagine him as mayor. The politically interwoven interests of the police service and politics are simply impossible to separate. Every decision of a police-chief mayor involving the police will always be suspect given that conflict.
Councillors who could not, over years, win the support of their colleagues based on arrogant or sloppy performance, deserve skeptical scrutiny. There are at least two of the mostly unimpressive field of 102 candidates from whom Toronto voters must choose as their next mayor who fit this bill.
Finally, there are those whose hard-edged partisanship should make them ineligible given that a mayor must not only weave a coalition at the council level, but with the province and Ottawa as well.
I know several of the candidates and their histories. I have known Olivia Chow for nearly four decades and at first I saw her as a royal pain in the butt.
She and her husband Jack Layton would harass me what seemed to be weekly as I was trying to help manage the Peterson/Rae government. Demanding action on AIDS, homelessness, child poverty and a long list of other social justice issues. Over time I came to realize their tactics may have been irritating, but their commitment and their issues mattered. And they often won.
Chow matured to build a citywide network of supporters of various political stripes. By the time they came to Ottawa, she and Jack were seasoned pros with great skill at finding both weak spots in some opponents and points of possible connection with others. Her partisanship faded further after she took up the role of teacher and urban activist.
She would have far greater success working with Ottawa than a former, highly unpopular Conservative police chief, for example. For many years Chow has been working the machinery of Queen’s Park, grinding out successes over and over.
Ana Bailão has some growth credentials, though less on unlearning hard-edged partisanship. Brad Bradford is a competent urban planner. Mitzie Hunter has shown courage and grown, but it is hard to list her accomplishments. Josh Matlow has a long list of municipal successes, but a much shorter list of Liberal supporters, which is curious for a lifelong Liberal partisan.
No matter how dimly you may feel about the choices before you, please vote! The next mayor will make decisions for a generation of Torontonians on housing, climate, and crime and policing.
Ignore the slurs about being soft on crime, or a profligate spender, or a lackey of Doug Ford or Justin Trudeau, or even most improbably, that a candidate’s appeal for fiscal discipline means they are heartless about the homeless. All that campaign blather fades in the face of your search for character and courage.
Ask yourself, “Do I trust this candidate to be guided by deeply held values, and the courage to stare down deep resistance from entrenched self-interest, and to make the right decisions for all Torontonians.”
Ignore the slurs being slung among candidates. All that campaign blather fades in the face of your search for character and courage