A look past the anti-Ford billboards and their promise to 'just smoke pot' in office reveals a crowded and uncertain field

The promises were simple enough.

“The current mayor threatens to kill people and gets publicly drunk. If elected, I promise I will just get publicly drunk,” someone name Ray Faranzi stated.

Jeff McElroy said, as mayor, he would only smoke pot, not crack cocaine.

Both pledges were plastered on campaign signs and posted around Toronto – part of a handful in Trinity Bellwoods park that caught the most attention. And each one was a fake, just a marketing campaign for something called NoFordNation.com, a finger-wagging website telling the people of Toronto that “with the upcoming election we have a chance to turn things around by electing someone who is qualified to be our mayor”.

Or, as their slogan put it: "Anyone’s better than Rob Ford."



Katie Simpson (@KatieSimpson24) New anti-Ford poster 2 #topoli pic.twitter.com/BZhYz8eSSl

Perhaps that’s true. Certainly it's the prevailing wisdom around Trinity Bellwoods, a recently gentrified, brunch-and-loft-apartment haven for yuppies and wealthy hipsters – among whom I count myself, for the record).

Katie Simpson (@KatieSimpson24) New anti-Ford poster 3 #topoli #robford pic.twitter.com/fIxKPArGbB

Ahead of the 27 October Toronto mayoral election, it's also likely the thinking elsewhere in what was once Toronto proper, the now generally liberal core of the megacity, which is surrounded by the more suburban areas and former municipalities which were largely responsible for Ford’s victory in 2010: Scarborough, North York, East York, York and Etobicoke. The final one is home to the Ford family.

So, if the call to action is Anyone But Ford, who is that Anyone?

The biggest threat to Ford's incumbency comes from the left, via the former city councillor Olivia Chow. Chow spent 15 years on council before migrating north to Ottawa as a federal MP with the New Democrats. Her husband, the late Jack Layton, who was also a Toronto city councillor for a time, was that party’s leader until his death in 2011.

Chow is the progressive in this fight – she would hold off on privatizing garbage pickup east of Yonge Street, for instance, and is against expanding the city’s downtown airport. But she has also promised to extend business tax reduction for another eight years. Chow is currently the front-runner, polling 36% against Ford’s 28% support in mid-March.

Also running is John Tory. Tory has a long resume, but the highlights are as follows: leader of Ontario’s provincial Progressive Conservative party; commissioner of the Canadian Football League; campaign chairman for former prime minister Brian Mulroney; president and CEO of behemoth media corporation, Rogers; and, most recently, popular afternoon talk radio host.

This isn’t Tory’s first crack at Toronto mayor. He finished second in the 2003 race, behind David Miller. Tory is considered right-wing by leftists and a centrist by right-wingers, which means he’s the most likely to scoop up that cohort of Ford’s slightly right-of-centre supporters.

Another former city councillor, David Soknacki, stands more firmly in the centre (for: tax reduction; against: private garbage collection in all areas east of Yonge Street – instead, only half of it!)

When he entered the contest, Soknacki said Toronto needed “level-headed and practical leadership.” One assumes he feels he’s the man to deliver it, but Torontonians might feel differently. He registered only 2% support in that March poll. To his credit, however, he seems to have the most fully-constructed platform so far.

Karen Stintz has also spent time in city hall, and was also the chair of the Toronto Transit Commission, the city’s snow-averse metro transit authority, for the last four years. That’s a fairly key attribute, as many of Toronto’s recent debates that aren’t about Rob Ford have focused instead on the worst way to provide transit service to Scarborough. In that mid-March poll, Stintz gathered 7% of the hypothetical vote.

Those are the major players, anyway. Can any of them beat Ford in October?

At this juncture, short of Ford actually being arrested or formally charged with anything, it looks like it could be a tight finish.

If the polling is to be believed (caveat: in Canada, it’s sometimes not to be believed– at all), Ford is no longer the front-runner in a crowded field. But he carries the most concise and clear message, which is essentially: “Stop the waste and the socialists.”

It would be unwise to forget that despite everything, and no matter the mocking billboards, both Ford and his message are still popular in parts of this town.