Adam Giambrone is quitting municipal politics and his executive assistant plans to run for his boss’s Davenport seat.

The decision not to run for re-election ends the TTC chair’s meteoric rise and crash through Toronto politics.

With a buzz in west-end Ward 18 about Kevin Beaulieu doing groundwork for a run, a Star reporter approached him in a City Hall office Monday afternoon and congratulated him on entering the race.

“Thank you, I’m not ready to confirm this at this point but obviously it’s a logical sequence of events,” Beaulieu said.

Late Monday night, Beaulieu confirmed his intentions.

“Yes, I can confirm that I intend to run for the seat in Ward 18,” he said.

Beaulieu said he made the decision after talking to friends and supporters in recent weeks.

“I’m excited about the opportunity, a good opportunity to work with the community. I’m looking forward to bringing a fresh perspective to Ward 18.”

Earlier Monday, Giambrone was still being coy about his intentions, saying he had until Sept. 10, the registration deadline, to decide whether to run again. But, after learning the Star was making inquiries, of him and others, he gave an interview to another newspaper in which he said he plans to take a breather from public life, returning in two or three years to run federally or provincially.

Beaulieu, who managed Giambrone’s election campaigns in 2003 and 2006, is known around city hall as low-key, likeable, hard-working and intensely loyal to the more frenetic Giambrone.

To people outside Ward 18, Beaulieu is best known as the man who was forced to step in front of a battery of cameras and reporters Feb. 10 to tell Torontonians that Giambrone’s mayoral campaign “ends today.”

Giambrone’s mayoral campaign imploded after he admitted to multiple affairs, to portraying his live-in girlfriend as political window dressing, and to lying to the Star’s Linda Diebel about it. He has since stared down repeated calls for his resignation as TTC chair, and further criticism about taxi expenses charged to the city. He later repaid a fare on which the particulars matched the details of his first date with a girlfriend.

Giambrone, 33, was considered a political wunderkind.

He ran for MP in Montreal while a 20-year-old McGill University student, served as president of the federal NDP and took Davenport in 2003 on his second try, becoming a protégé of Mayor David Miller and a fervent champion of public transit.

Giambrone’s exit could further hobble Miller’s attempts to protect his legacy of public transit expansion, under threat by the plans of some mayoral candidates and the provincial government’s decision to delay $4 billion in promised transit funding.

There have been rumours Giambrone would try to unseat Davenport Liberal MPP Tony Ruprecht in the October 2011 Ontario election. His comments Monday suggest that won’t be the case. Giambrone, an archeologist by trade, has told friends he plans to travel after October and speculated about possible work with the World Bank.

There were questions about whether Giambrone could win again in Davenport.

Before the scandal, some constituents picketed his campaign launch, accusing him of steamrolling ahead on large and small city renovations despite residents’ protests.

Ana Bailão, one of five candidates currently registered in the ward, and who trailed Giambrone by 1,260 votes in the 2003 election, said Monday that Beaulieu as councillor would be “more of the same.”

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“What the community is looking for is a councillor committed to community participation and consultation,” she said. “It will be a good fight.”

Related:

The Goods: Giambrone's email message

