Leading mayoral candidate George Smitherman went for Rob Ford’s political throat Wednesday, saying his rival’s “disgusting” comments about gays in 2006 make him unfit to lead Toronto.

In the first major debate, all six main hopefuls on stage, Smitherman seized his opportunity to pose one question to another candidate, taking Ford to task for his argument against a $1.5 million AIDS prevention strategy.

“It is very preventable,” Ford told council in 2006. “If you are not doing needles and you are not gay, you wouldn’t get AIDS probably, that’s the bottom line.”

He also said he didn’t understand why more women were becoming AIDS patients, adding: “Maybe they’re sleeping with bisexual men.” (In that year, more than 27 per cent of Torontonians diagnosed with HIV were women. Nearly half of HIV-positive women in the city are from countries where it is endemic, and heterosexual sex is a primary means of transmission.)

Smitherman, who is gay, turned to Ford and said: “I’d like you to explain to people how your character, and especially these comments, is justifiable now that you present yourself as someone who wishes to be mayor of Toronto, one of the most diverse places to be found anywhere in the world?”

Some audience members booed the attack. Ford did not apologize for, or try to explain, the remarks or any others he has made as in a decade as an outspoken Etobicoke councillor.

“Let me tell you what Rob Ford’s character is about — it’s about integrity, it’s about helping kids get off the street, helping thousands of kids . . . I don’t talk the talk, I walk the walk. I have a Rob Ford football foundation. I’m caring.”

Ford then spoke of his economic development efforts in Etobicoke North and his business acumen, before hitting back with a dig at the former health minister’s stewardship of the province’s cash-gobbling electronic health records system.

“You want to get personal, go ahead . . . I’m not going to play games like you have, blowing more than a billion dollars on eHealth,” Ford said.

Later, in a scrum, Smitherman called Ford’s comments about AIDS victims “disgusting” and encouraged voters to go online and look up Ford’s other verbal gaffes.

Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone jumped in to agree with Smitherman.

“Really, (Ford) doesn’t believe about diversity,” Pantalone said, citing Ford’s consistent pattern of voting against grants to diversity groups. Ford stood a short distance away, smiling tightly and shaking his head.

Asked by reporters if he regretted the comments, Ford again referred to his philanthropic work and vowed not to resort to personal attacks. With reporters yelling questions, he turned and left after noting the candidates had to go to a question-and-answer session at a Scarborough school.

Former executive and federal Liberal fundraiser Rocco Rossi did not join the attacks on Ford, nor did Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti or Women’s Post publisher Sarah Thomson.

A Toronto Star-Angus Reid poll conducted April 8-12 showed Smitherman leading the field, but with Ford, then only three weeks into his campaign, just seven points behind and far ahead of the rest of the pack. Smitherman’s new campaign manager, Bruce Davis, has vowed to “unleash” the combative former deputy premier.

Earlier in the debate, in front of several hundred members of the Toronto Real Estate Board, Smitherman also had a target on his back.

Rossi used his question to accuse Smitherman of being arrogant for releasing few policy statements four months into the 11-month campaign.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

“When will you come down from Mount Olympus and give us the wisdom of what you actually stand for, beyond giving us the story that you’re going to do a line-by-line budget analysis with the same due diligence and the same level of skill that saw a billion dollars blow out the door on eHealth?” Rossi asked.

Smitherman replied: “Indeed (eHealth) is not a place where the best results were achieved, and I take responsibility for that, but overall for five years I have a record that I’m proud of and I’ll put it up against yours at any time.”

Pantalone also aimed his question at Smitherman, saying that in five years as the most powerful Toronto MPP, “You were unable or unwilling to do something for Toronto and the GTA in terms of transportation systems, in terms of GO Transit, Transit City and finally the TTC.”

Smitherman shot back, listing ways he helped Toronto as health minister and noting Toronto has done little with provincial dollars it got four years ago to expand the subway to York University.

“Why have you only managed to move a water main, Joe?” Smitherman shot back.

Thomson chided Rossi for a transit plan that would add only 2 kilometres of new subway track per year, and said his financing plan doesn’t add up.

He replied that his plan to sell Toronto Hydro and other assets to pay off the city’s debt and free up hundreds of millions of dollars spent in servicing that debt makes more sense than relying on the province to pay, as the city has done with the Transit City plan.

Mammoliti asked Thomson why she told reporters she lost a 1997 bid for a Hamilton council seat by about 200 votes when it was more than 1,000.

She said she remembered it wrong and learned a lesson about checking figures before speaking to reporters.

The first question — and the one that mattered most to the realtors, judging by the cheers and boos — was which candidates would promise to repeal the land transfer tax introduced by Mayor David Miller.

Ford and Mammoliti said they would, while the others said there is no obvious immediate replacement for the $200 million a year it generates.