TORONTO

David Miller just waltzed in from Ottawa in a skirt and heels.

Hide your purse.

Sheesh, 230 days ’til Oct. 27. Our heads will explode. Now Olivia Chow, surprise, surprise, has quit as an NDP MP and joined the mayoral race.

So the choices are clear. Olivia Chow vs. Rob Ford in a grudge match for the ages. David Miller’s Revenge. Brawl for the Hall.

Actually, “she makes David Miller look like a conservative,” said Mayor Ford, out shooing cockroaches from community housing Wednesday.

Oh joy — if you pine for the glory days of inventive new taxes to pay for inventive new social meddling. Hallelujah — if you prefer a mayor too busy picking our pockets to smoke crack cocaine.

“The more the merrier,” Ford said of Chow. “You’ll see what Ford Nation says.”

On the other hand, “many people I speak to are really hankering for a change,” councillor and former Manitoba communist party boss Paula Fletcher told TV cameras. “Something fresh and clean.”

A breath of fresh air, you mean, Paula? An antidote to the dysfunctional rabble down there in that concrete clamshell on Nathan Phillips Square?

Fresh air? Olivia Chow has been a politician since 1985, from school board to City Hall, where she was a Miller diehard, to Parliament Hill.

That’s nearly three decades. As much as we libertarians hate regulation, there ought to be a law against career politicians.

Before long, thanks to name recognition, you can’t get rid of them.

They settle in, like herpes or termites, and scurry around looking for things to do, which invariably cost money, other people’s money, your money.

That’s Olivia. Maybe her heart’s in the right place, but her hand’s in your pocket.

“She’s never met a public dollar she couldn’t spend,” was the John Tory campaign’s response to Chow’s move.

What a fetching addition to the mayoral race, though — Olivia peddling that flower-festooned bicycle of hers, with the milk basket bouncing behind.

Look what we’ve got so far: A crack-smoking, jive-talking, incumbent, a wealthy radio host, Tory, who can’t win an election to save his soul, a spice seller, David Soknacki, from Scarborough ... and they’re front-runners.

Jeez, Karen Stintz is starting to look good.

I like Stintz. She finally gave Variety Village a bus stop. She’s as fiscally conservative as Ford and was once David to Miller’s Goliath.

But she billed taxpayers for $4,500 in voice lessons. And she still comes across as shrill and abrasive, well-heeled and too smart for her own good, like she has a couple of degrees and a rocket scientist father, which she does. Too bad. I hope she finds “the touch.”

Voters like their politicians cuddly, even rich and cuddly. Ask Ford.

Meanwhile, dig deeper into the list of 36 confirmed mayoral candidates and you’ll find a guy named Al Gore, a gun-toting former councillor, a white supremacist, a singer, a saxophonist, a pot activist and Morgan Baskin, 18, who took the $200 fee out of her babysitting money. Morgan is a breath of fresh air. So is the marijuana guy, I suppose. But Olivia?

Her campaign is the same old, same old. It’s run by battle scarred war horses like John Laschinger, who brought us David Miller, and Liberal gunslinger Warren Kinsella. Old political groupies like Patrick Gossage and Robin Sears are out tooting Chow’s horn.

By comparison, Rob Ford’s re-election bid looks downright folksy, run by his bellicose brother Doug and featuring fridge magnets and a Cheech and Chong act on YouTube.

Anyway, we’re stuck with this circus for another 230, whoops, 229, days.

It’ll have more twists and turns than my colon, which, incidentally, will be invaded by a scope about the same time as Chow’s official campaign launch Thursday in St. James Town.

Colonoscopy. City Hall. Ever notice how often we have to bend over these days?