🔭 PLATFORM VIEW: Ana Bailão’s endorsement by former mayor John Tory
🔗 LINK: anabailao.ca/latest-news/john-tory-endo…
🔧 DOABLE? It’s done!
💰 COSTED? N/A
✨ OVERALL: ⭐️⭐️ (2 out of five)
This is another unconventional pick for this PLATFORM VIEW feature, but since it’s the talk of the town — and apparently the focus of a pretty widespread Robocall campaign — let’s take a quick look at former mayor John Tory’s endorsement yesterday of Ana Bailão.
It’s a credit to her campaign team that they got the former mayor to endorse after he had repeatedly and publicly said he wasn’t going to endorse.
There has reportedly been a pretty epic battle among the crew of people who regularly offer the former mayor advice, with one side arguing that it was important for him to make an endorsement, and the other urging him to stay neutral.
The argument for the latter was, I think, pretty solid. It’s way too late in the game to maximize the impact of an endorsement, as advance voting is done and mail-in ballots are already in the mail. There’s a real chance Tory takes the L on this one, with his endorsement failing to make enough of a difference to put Bailão over the top.
Considering Tory’s previous reputation as a politician who took more than his share of Ls, you’d think he’d want to avoid that.
But that’s irrelevant now! He’s endorsed. That’s still undoubtedly a win for Bailão, because Tory retains a lot of popularity in this city. Forum Research polls from earlier in the campaign suggested he’d get around 42%-44% of the vote. Olivia Chow’s numbers have never reached those heights. If all of those hypothetical Tory voters move to Bailão, the hypothetical math suggests she would hypothetically win.
But I’m not sure that’s likely. Voters like Tory, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they like his candidates. Setting aside his endorsement of Cynthia Lai, who died before election day, Tory made 12 councillor endorsements last fall, but only eight of them won their seats. That’s a 66% success rate — decent, but hardly bulletproof.
Also: as endorsements go, this one isn’t great. Tory’s statement runs a Tory-esque 1,050 words. He doesn’t mention Bailão’s name until he’s 516 words in. He speaks glowingly about Bailão’s record, but refrains from taking any really specific shots at Chow’s campaign, which probably dulls the impact he could have.
Tory makes two major arguments. The first is that Bailão is really good at working with others.
“The Mayor of Toronto cannot be polarizing or divisive. They can’t be driven by party politics or represent just one group of people,” Tory says. “It’s all hands on deck and yes, that includes business and labour, not just bigger and bigger government.”
How much stock you put into this probably depends on how you view Tory’s record on negotiations. He held true to a diplomatic approach to negotiations throughout most of his tenure, with the notable exception of when he went door-to-door opposing Premier Doug Ford’s public health cuts — which ended up being probably his most effective negotiation effort. Go figure.
Tory also makes direct reference to property taxes, writing, “She will fix this city’s finances without making life harder for people struggling to pay their bills. How can anyone say affordability is the biggest issue and that somehow big property tax increases are the answer?”
Fixing the city’s finances without increasing property taxes beyond the rate of inflation is a very tall order, as Tory knows from experience. He was, after all, forced to implement an extra tax levy to fund capital work.
And while property taxes are part of affordability — like any cost put on a household — I’d suggest they’re probably not anywhere near the biggest factor. The average property tax bill accounts for about 4% of Toronto’s median household income. And properly-funded municipal services can absolutely help to reduce bigger household costs, like transportation (19% of average household spending, according to StatsCan) or shelter (29%).
PLATFORM VIEW is a daily(ish) feature by City Hall Watcher on Substack Notes. Got a request for a candidate policy proposal I should review? Let me know.