A weird political subplot emerged from city hall this week through the reporting of my colleague Jennifer Pagliaro. One that, on the one hand seems to amount to not much, but on the other hand highlights core questions about Mayor John Tory’s leadership more than halfway through his term.

It seems that the mayor voted in favour of a couple of motions during a recent meeting — one on applying a “gender equity lens” to the city budget put forward by Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam, another on adding a new position to the city’s Newcomer Office moved by Councillor Joe Mihevc — while his office was simultaneously instructing his council allies to vote against them, through the use of a semi-secret “cheat sheet” of advice on voting routinely issued during meetings.

On the one hand, both motions passed, so it seems like the apparent duplicity in how Tory was talking and voting and how his staff were lobbying amounted to not much. But on the other hand, why the hell would you do that? Why publicly support something while privately trying to kill it? The failure of Tory and his office to reply with an explanation for days after Pagliaro first asked about it (and then published a story about it) didn’t help clear the air.

Related:Mayor Tory says lack of communication with staff to blame for vote discrepancies

It was easy enough for some of his regular opponents to conclude that he was consciously trying to talk happy on some politically correct issues while actively trying to undermine the initiatives — which certainly seems to be the conclusion drawn by Wong-Tam, who said she felt it reflected “dishonesty” from the mayor and said it raised the question of whether Tory is “the same person in front of the camera as … when the camera lights are turned off.” Whether, that is, he will pay lip service to something to avoid flak while working to achieve the opposite.

It was equally easy to speculate that it might be a simple mistake — someone typing “no” instead of “yes” because they lost track of which line on the spreadsheet they were on, for instance. Or that he had changed his mind and someone didn’t get the memo in time. Or that the difference reflected unresolved disagreement inside the mayor’s office. Or something else.

When the mayor didn’t immediately clarify — initially issuing a statement saying his votes spoke for themselves, ignoring the rest of the question about the cheat sheet — it just invited everyone to connect the dots to conform with the picture of him they imagined.

Now, I am generally of the opinion that what can be attributed to incompetence should not be assumed to be malice. And when Tory did finally speak to the Star on Tuesday from South Asia, where he is travelling, his own explanation was just that. Well, not incompetence, per se, but a staff that was incommunicado.

“There was no communication with my staff at all on how I was intending to vote on that, and there was no communication between them and me as to how they were telling other people that they should consider voting,” he said, before launching into a tirade against Wong-Tam’s incivility in raising this in sharply accusatory terms publicly without bringing it up with him first.

This explanation raises its own questions, of course, about why the staff the mayor employs to work on his behalf are out offering freelance advice to his allies that he is not aware of and does not agree with. Advice that those allies are led to believe reflects the wishes of the mayor. As Councillor James Pasternak, who says he relies on the cheat sheet for guidance, put it this week, “That was problematic because we take the mayor’s staff as speaking for the mayor.” And who can blame him? Isn’t speaking for the mayor what they are paid to do?

It’s not entirely clear why the mayor’s staff is offering this secret advice to allied councillors in the first place — it was a practice that began under Rob Ford on chaotic days when no one could keep track of all the on-the-fly motions that popped up in chaotic council meetings. Some of former mayor David Miller’s allies on council claim they never received such cheat sheets in their executive committee days, despite what has been reported here and elsewhere. On the recent question of ranked ballots in municipal elections, on which the mayor had proudly, publicly insisted he supported the reform, the mayor’s cheat sheet offered no advice and staff told at least one councillor it was a “free vote.” So why offer confused or confusing advice on things like gender equity and the newcomer office? Why offer any secret staff advice at all? The mayor, after all, is free to make a speech on any item to tell people how he’s voting, if he wants them to get that message.

Of course, the whole episode probably wouldn’t raise many eyebrows, if it didn’t fit neatly into a picture where what John Tory really stands for as mayor a source of confusion for many. Tory presents himself as a conciliatory, big-tent guy. In the past, I’ve written about how a “John Tory Compromise” involves him seeming to take every side of a given issue at once. But as they say, if you have a hundred priorities, you have none. In a government, faced with limited resources and conflicting goals, you have to make choices.

So Tory talks a lot about the importance of social programs and infrastructure and has some plans underway to build and enhance them, but often these goals remain long-term. “Aspirational,” as he once said his anti-poverty plan was. Meanwhile, millions of dollars materialize, almost without debate, to speed up construction on the Gardiner Expressway, immediately. There’s one way, you see, of determining which equally important goals are more equally important than others. The 17-stop Eglinton East LRT is loudly supported by the mayor. But the one-stop Scarbrough Subway extension is loudly supported by the mayor and has funding committed to it.

During the campaign, he solemnly promised not to raise TTC fares, and upon election immediately did raise them (and has done so every year since). But when he is challenged on why he does not raise property taxes beyond the rate of inflation, he points to his promise on the campaign trail not to raise them.

In the past, this confusion about where exactly the mayor stands has played out in public. He famously Tweeted to Olympic swimmer Penny Oleksiak that he’d save programming at a pool dear to her heart, and then did not do so.

During the drafting of a debate on regulating Uber, a faction of councillors led by Janet Davis went into the afternoon thinking they had a deal with the mayor on a bylaw — only to find out on the floor of council that the mayor had instead settled on a very different bylaw, with contradictory aims from theirs, with a different faction of councillors.

The mayor claims to support a lot of things. It’s fair, I think, to believe that he honestly does support them, on some level. Like, “in an ideal world, I’m in favour of that.” But in this world, real support comes with dollars, or other significant actions. Real support comes with the weight of his office’s authority, and his staff’s lobbying to whip votes from other councillors.

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On these recent issues, at least, the mayor’s opinion on things was such a matter of confusion that his own staff were applying the weight of his office in the opposite direction — trying to influence his allies to vote against him. As someone issuing a statement might put it, that level of confusion about the mayor’s level of support speaks for itself.

With files from Jennifer Pagliaro.

Edward Keenan writes on city issues ekeenan@thestar.ca . Follow: @thekeenanwire

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