The Rogers TV studio is packed with 19 candidates arguing why they should fill Adam Vaughan’s shoes in Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina.

The main target in Toronto’s wildest city council race is Joe Cressy, the 30-year-old NDP blueblood who joined this pack after losing to Vaughan in a June byelection to represent the area federally.

“All he wants to do is tax because he doesn’t want to offend his union people,” lawyer Sam Goldstein says, jabbing at Cressy. Other rivals accuse the NDPer of trying to inject party politics into the ostensibly non-partisan city hall.

One of them, former NoJetsTO chair Anshul Kapoor, later says, when asked who he considers his chief competition: “Clearly it’s Joe Cressy — he has the name recognition.”

Until recently a Stephen Lewis Foundation campaigner, Cressy is the son of two former city councillors, Gordon Cressy and Joanne Campbell, renowned for social justice work. Campaigning for the federal seat, he was on every doorstep twice before entering the council race.

But nothing is simple in Toronto’s complex, booming core, which includes the Annex, Chinatown, Kensington Market, the Entertainment District and Queens Quay. Back in 2006, after then-councillor Olivia Chow jumped to federal politics, Vaughan spoiled an apparent council coronation of her executive assistant.

This time, a total of 22 candidates are vying to represent the ward’s 76,600 residents, who include longtime homeowners, University of Toronto students and, to the south, an ever-increasing number of condo dwellers.

“There are at least eight excellent candidates, all of whom I’d be happy to have as my councillor,” says Tim Grant, chair of the Harbord Village Residents’ Association.

He is endorsing Terri Chu — a 33-year-old expert in community energy production and founder of civic engagement group Why Should I Care? Grant likes Cressy but cites Chu’s organizational skills and environmental policies, which include large new buildings actually generating power, not just consuming it efficiently.

How to manage growth, particularly condo towers, is a prime concern in this ward, where Vaughan became a hero to many by systematically consulting neighbourhoods and making them partners in the development process.

This is also ground zero for the fight against expansion of Billy Bishop Airport, with its taxi-traffic snarl and noise at the ward’s south end.

Cressy acknowledges being stung by his federal loss to Vaughan and erstwhile supporters who urged him to consider council instead. He now says: “You have to earn (support) — I had not earned it in my community the way that Adam had.”

While vowing to leave party politics at city hall’s doors, he would be an unabashed progressive, advocating a city-specific sales and/or income tax to fund transit projects and other badly needed infrastructure investment.

“We will not get any real action on these unless we win the argument to invest again,” Cressy says, eager to swim against the anti-tax tide.

He is greeted warmly at doorsteps, twice being asked, “Where’s your mom?” before, in speechifying tones, touting his experience fighting AIDS in Africa and promoting literacy in Canada’s North.

His only rival in name recognition is Sarah Thomson, 46, a Rosedale resident who came close to winning the area provincially in 2011 and joined the Ward 20 race in September after folding her mayoral campaign.

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Thomson, who wants road tolls for non-Torontonians on the Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway to fund a downtown relief subway line, gets a warm welcome from Grange Community Association president Ralph Daley.

But the retired scientist is leaning toward Kapoor, who led the grassroots lobbying effort that helped convince executive committee members to defer an island airport decision until more studies are tabled.

“I want someone who’s bright and quick to learn and has demonstrated an ability to organize,” Daley says on his doorstep near Queen St. W.

Thomson touts her entrepreneurial efforts to a right-leaning voter who is eyeing Charles MacDonald, 41, a transit and airport expansion advocate portraying himself as a fighter who beat the odds to survive traumatic burns as a teenager.

To the south, by Bathurst Quay, Kapoor, 34, is making his pitch to a co-op resident: “I’m an issue-based candidate, not aligned with a party.” He is told: “You’re the third person to come by.”

Kapoor knows that, even with his NoJetsTO cred, he is in a pack of underdogs fighting for a complex job he expects to be “a grinding 100 hours a week.”

“Joe (Cressy) is a good guy, but he was raised with old-school political ideals,” Kapoor says. “We need fresh thinking.”

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