TORONTO

Ward 15 resident Betty Easson was so angry with the court case against the mayor she spent Labour Day writing the civic leader an e-mail to tell Rob Ford how proud she is of him for keeping his promises and standing up to the unions.

“I don’t know how you do it day after day ... the back stabbing, the bad mouthing, the idiots that continually attack you and the fantastic job you are doing,” she says at the outset of her lengthy e-mail, which was also forwarded to all 44 councillors.

Easson, who is 65 but still working part-time to help pay the bills, puts the blame squarely on the unions for being behind the conflict-of-interest case against Ford — a kind of quid pro quo, so to speak, for being kneecapped at the bargaining table this past winter.

“Unions should not be running our city and Mayor Ford is seeing that that is not going to happen ... and the unions don’t like it,” she writes.

Reached Tuesday by phone, Easson says it’s clear to her that the unions want Ford out and because they can’t be seen to be behind the court case, have gotten others (friends) to speak up for them.

She adds that most people she knows understand full well what is going on.

“They’re (the unions are) scared to death,” she adds. “We’re not idiots ... we can understand that somebody has come into politics in the city of Toronto to stand up to them.”

She adds that it is such a “breath of fresh air” to have an “honest” politician in the mayor’s chair — one who actually listens to what people want.

“I love this man,” Easson says, noting that by contrast her councillor Josh Colle is an “ass kisser” who does what he thinks will get him votes.

“The attacks on him (Ford) are nothing but childish.”

Easson is pretty close to being on the money with her evaluation of what’s behind the conflict-of-interest case.

I said this before but it bears repeating: No mayor in my 14 years at City Hall has ever been bullied so viciously and so persistently as Rob Ford.

You can say what you want about his stubbornness and his tendency to be his own worst enemy.

But Mel Lastman did plenty to embarrass this city. Never did I witness such vicious and personal attacks on him.

Easson is right. The unions may not be front and centre.

But the case and the plethora of integrity/audit complaints that have been levelled against Ford all come from the same cabal, the same union mouthpieces.

I direct your attention to a tubby little twerp by the name of Adam Chaleff-Freudenthaler, who on his own website bills himself as a “labour relations professional” by trade.

Chaleff-Freudenthaler, who first acquired his political chops as part of NDPer Olivia Chow’s Toronto Youth Cabinet, was very miffed when Ford won.

I’d venture to say the aspiring politician, who lost his bid for school trustee in 2010, also didn’t like it much when the Ford regime decided not to put him back on the Library Board this year.

It didn’t escape my attention that the complainant in the conflict of interest case against Ford, Paul Magder — who is being represented by prominent lawyer Clayton Ruby — volunteered on Chaleff-Freudenthaler’s 2010 campaign.

Ruby’s firm is also handling Boardwalk Cafe owner George Foulidis’s libel suit against the mayor.

Yes these blowhards really do stick together.

Chaleff-Freudenthaler — one of those classic bullies who cries like a baby when someone dares give him a taste of his own medicine — did more than approach Ruby to handle the Magder case.

He’s initiated a compliance audit against Ford with respect to his election finances and whined to the Integrity Commissioner last July when Councillor Doug Ford said “what goes around comes around” to him — “an intimidating and bullying kind of phrase” according to Ms. Manners the Integrity Commissioner.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Chaleff-Freudenthaler and his cabal of pro-union sympathizers will be practically drooling in rapturous delight at the sight of Ruby getting in the mayor’s face in court Wednesday.

But what these smug bullies fail to realize is that there is every likelihood they’ll turn Ford into a sympathetic folk hero with their actions.

Easson agrees.

In fact she makes it clear she and many others she’s spoken to intend to vote for Ford again in two years.

“I don’t think any politician I’ve voted for has done what what he’s done,” she says. “As a Torontonian I’m embarrassed by council, not by the mayor.”