Looking for a fresh start, Toronto has elected John Tory the next mayor. Tory beat Doug Ford, the brother of current mayor Rob Ford, in a tight race Monday night, severing the city from the past four years of scandal, embarrassment and mismanagement.

Tory, the former Ontario Progressive Conservative leader, defeated Ford’s brother, one-term councillor Doug Ford, and former NDP MP Olivia Chow to end a contentious nine-month campaign that came on the heels of an even more contentious four years of city council.

Tory’s victory secured a tight victory over Ford, holding 39 per cent of all cast votes with only a handful of polling stations left to calculate. Ford, meantime, held nearly 35 per cent, while Olivia Chow placed a distant third with just under 23 per cent of the vote.

Marcel Wieder, president of the Aurora Strategy Group, says John Tory’s successful campaign can be attributed to two main ingredients: money and organizers.

According to Tory’s campaign donor list, he received more than 5,000 donations totally $2.48 million, more than Olivia Chow’s campaign and significantly more than Doug Ford, whose campaign only ran for one month.

As for Tory’s organization, it was led by key Ontario liberal Tom Allison, who was the brain behind Kathleen Wynne’s successful campaign for premier.

"He’s got some of the top brains working for him. He went out and recruited key liberals," Wieder told Yahoo Canada News. “In order to win Toronto you need the backing of the Liberal machinery. In the last provincial election, they won all but three seats in Toronto.”

Tory campaigned heavily on his vision for Toronto’s transit futre, specifically his promise to build the current Scarborough subway extension and his SmartTrack above-ground rail system – a 22-stop trail line stretching from Etobicoke to Scarborough and south to Union Station.

Tory’s SmartTrack plan, and his promise to deliver the project in a mere seven years, captured the attention of Toronto’s electorate as well as his opponents. Chow and Ford spent much of the final leg of the campaign attacking the details in Tory’s transit promise. But with their own transit plans lacking depth – Ford promised to build subways everywhere with no meaningful funding plan while Chow’s plan was a combination of bus improvements and LRT lines that failed to garner much hype – Tory’s strategy sat as the only plan that felt both reasonable and inspiring.

Tory’s election platform also promised he would build a more affordable and functional city, proposing a tax benefit to help spur growth along the impending Scarborough subway line and installing a council code of conduct that would put an end to the mismanagement and distractions that marred the previous four years.

Tory is a lawyer by trade and the former CEO of Rogers Media. He remains on the board of Rogers Communications, but has said he will ensure there is not conflict while he sits as mayor.

Tory was the leader of Ontario’s PC Party between 2004 and 2009 and the leader of the Official Opposition for two of those years. He was an MPP for two years before losing the seat in 2007 to now-Premier Kathleen Wynne and governed from outside Queen’s Park after that.

He previously ran for Toronto mayor in 2003, losing to David Miller by less than 40,000 total votes. Tory was also widely rumoured to be considering a bid in 2010, but ultimately stayed off the ballot that resulted in Rob Ford’s mayoralty.

Much of the nine-month campaign appeared to be a referendum on Rob Ford’s time in office, specifically the distractions and international embarrassment brought on by his issues with alcoholism and drug abuse. Tory and Chow have battled to position themselves as the anti-Ford since they joined the race, Chow by being the progressive option and Tory by being the rational conservative alternative for voters.

When Doug Ford replaced Rob on the ballot in September, he attempted to tap into his popular brother’s base of support while simultaneously distancing him from his campaign.

“Anyone who knows Doug Ford knows I am not Rob Ford,” he told the Toronto Sun editorial board during the home stretch of the campaign.

“We’re night and day. That doesn’t mean Rob’s bad, we’re just different people, absolutely different people.”

Nine months ago, when Rob Ford first filed his intentions to run for re-election, this final result seemed entirely unlikely. But after a seemingly-endless series of debates, campaign announcements, abandoned campaigns and swapped candidates, the final chapter of the 2014 Toronto mayoral election has finally been written.

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