Mayoral candidate Rob Ford didn’t acquire his reputation as a bullying blowhard by chance; he earned it by fulminating for a decade on city council. So it was surprising, to say the least, to hear Ford say this week, while apologizing for an insensitive remark about AIDS: “That’s not my style.” Say what?

Anyone even remotely familiar with this candidate’s past rhetoric can be forgiven for doing a double take over Ford’s revisionist assessment of his personal “style.” His own words, over the years, form the strongest evidence against him.

For example, when advocates for the homeless staged a loud protest at city hall, Ford’s response was: “I’m working. Why don’t you get a job?” Also on the subject of the poor, during a 2003 debate on locating more homeless shelters outside the downtown core, Ford noted: “Homelessness is a cancer. What you’re trying to do is spread the cancer across the city.” This from a man who now claims hurtful comments are “not my style.”

He once called fellow Councillor Gloria Lindsay Luby a “low-life” and a “waste of skin.” And he referred to Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti as “Gino-boy.” Ever deaf to ethnic sensitivities, in March 2008, Ford attempted to praise the East Asian community by noting: “Those Oriental people work like dogs.”

There’s no evidence Ford was drunk when he made those insensitive comments, but drinking was certainly a factor when he confronted a Durham couple during a Toronto Maple Leafs game in 2006. “Are you some kind of right-wing commie bastard?” he asked, somewhat incoherently. “Do you want your little wife to go over to Iran and get raped and shot?” After initial denials, he subsequently apologized.

Now that Ford is running for mayor, it appears he’d like to forget about all this. In March, at the outset of the campaign, Doug Ford, his brother and campaign manager, insisted that Rob is a “the biggest social liberal there is.”

Ford can try to rewrite history, but the record is as big and bold and brazen as the candidate himself. And it is nothing to be proud of.