No councillor in modern Toronto history has been trounced like Sandra Bussin was trounced in 2010. Bussin was defeated by 39 percentage points in the last municipal election, more than 9,000 votes, after three candidates dropped out just to make sure she lost.

She now says she plans to try to win her old seat back in the next election.

“Yes, I am intending to run. It is my intention,” she said when contacted Wednesday.

Bussin, the Speaker of council under David Miller, was dogged by several controversies during the last of her four terms in Beaches-East York, the most significant over her role in supporting a no-bid 20-year city deal for the local Boardwalk Cafe.

Adeptly demonized by the “gravy train” campaign of Rob Ford, she was beaten by challenger Mary-Margaret McMahon 65 per cent to 26 per cent — by far the biggest margin of defeat for any incumbent in the post-amalgamation city.

In an interview two months later, she said she was done with politics. But she has come to believe Ward 32 has warmed to her in her absence.

She contended that residents have grown unhappy with what she called McMahon’s “apologist” approach to condo development. And she suggested that the wave of discontent that sparked an “anybody but Bussin” movement has now subsided.

“You win some, you lose some, and it was a moment in time,” she said breezily. “I’ve had a lot of people approaching me saying they really regret what happened and want to help me, and they don’t like what’s been happening at city hall or locally. So you throw your hat in the ring and see what happens.”

McMahon scoffed. She said her constituents are “very happy” with her work and still hostile to Bussin.

“I say bring it. It’s an open election, anyone can run, the more the merrier. And I guess she has a short memory, and maybe she needs to recall the election results,” McMahon said.

“I’m regularly approached by people in the ward who are glad she’s gone. So I think there’s a bit of a reality check that needs to be done, because I’m still cleaning up her messes. Mainly the Boardwalk Cafe, which she championed.”

McMahon defended her work on the development file, saying she has already “done more for Queen Street” than Bussin did in her 13-year tenure. And she said Bussin’s jibe is “really ironic for someone who’s been working for a developer.”

Bussin, an agent for Forest Hill Real Estate, said she assisted one developer who was “looking for some property,” but “nothing came of it.”

Brian Graff, a resident active in local battles against condo proposals, said he and others have indeed grown disenchanted with McMahon’s developer-friendly approach, and he said she is “very vulnerable” in 2014.

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But Bussin, he said, hasn’t made a sufficient post-2010 effort to rehabilitate her image — “or admitted that she lost the election for reasons that had to do with what she’d done as councillor.”

“I think if she’d been a bit more contrite — you go to the Anthony Weiner extreme, people will give somebody a second chance, to a point,” Graff said. “But it does require that you do some work to reverse people’s perceptions of you.”