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“Yeah, and how about the leftist activist who cheers the Jew-hating Louis Farrakhan?” asked Schezad, the one-time Commie now a manager in a pharmaceutical enterprise, referring to Tamika Mallory of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Zaidi reminded me that I had campaigned against Rob Ford when he ran for the mayor of Toronto. “But the same Mayor Ford and Doug Ford came to see me in the hospital as I battled cancer despite my ridiculing the mayor on my Newstalk 1010 radio show,” I protested.

“That’s rather selfish of you,” retorted Zaidi.

The banter continued until the discussion turned to the NDP and its new leader, Jagmeet Singh.

“Right, now that is a true socialist, isn’t he,” asked Schezad with barely concealed sarcasm.

“Between Jagmeet’s $5,000 designer suits and Doug Ford’s jackets from Walmart, the choice is clear: I’d be more comfortable with the Etobicoke city councillor who has Ontario and Canada in mind than a guy molded in medieval religious symbols who was once ‘Jimmy Dhaliwal’ the lawyer, but then dropped both the last and first names he was known by,” Schezad added.

By a three-to-one margin we voted to check in at the Doug Ford event held in a community centre overlooking a Muslim cemetery. The reluctant Zaidi trailed us sheepishly inside the event where Doug Ford was talking about his late brother Rob Ford and how he saw first-hand the gaps in palliative care.

To our surprise, we were not the only left/liberals in that room. We met a few Dippers, among them an old-time New Democrat from Scarborough and many Liberals, one a prominent activist from the Bob Rae liberal leadership campaign.

We later met Doug, shook hands and took the mandatory selfie, but found in him a warm person, affable and approachable who was totally free of the canned English spoken by both the Right and the Left.

Driving home that night, Zaidi conceded that the Left vs. Right paradigm had shifted dramatically and the battle today was between cronyism and good governance.

Doug Ford squeaked in, breaking one final barrier of cronyism, one within his own party. Hopefully, these four leftist voters will nudge him over the top to the next great battle — the end of ethnic vote banks.

Twitter: @TarekFatah