NDP candidate Joe Cimino is a bit of a celebrity in Sudbury.

Why? As you can see from his photo he is almost a dead ringer for Rob Ford, Toronto’s troubled mayor.

“I'm generally considered more handsome than Ford,” the 44-year-old father of two joked on Twitter.

When the Star tweeted Cimino’s photos without comment, folks on Twitter immediately made the connection.

“He looks like a Ford brother,” tweeter Les Williams said.

People quite often come up to the Sudbury city councillor of eight years and say, “Hey Joe, did you know you look like Rob Ford?”

Cimino says he gets a chuckle out of it and even recalled how last year a Toronto couple attending a wedding in Sudbury wanted to have their picture taken with him so they could pretend Ford was at the celebration.

“Yesterday I was in the mall canvassing in the food court and two out of seven people said, ‘you know you look like Rob Ford but you are better looking,’” he told the Star on Tuesday and added that his reputation is intact.

“It’s more of a comedic thing. I take it with a grain of salt, I am not offended by it,” said Cimino, who is lifelong resident of Sudbury where he is a special-education teacher.

And just for the record, he noted he was born in October 1969, not May 1969 when Ford came into the world — “just so you don’t think I’m a twin.”