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His opponents also stayed away from Ford’s biggest weakness, his crack cocaine admission and other bad behaviour that has made him a regular on the late-night comedy circuit. It was not until 70 minutes into the debate before someone mentioned “crack cocaine” and that was a journalist asking a question from the audience. Ford virtually ignored the question, falling back on his “I’m not perfect” line.

Ford was briefly challenged by Tory following his statement but the CityNews moderator — who did little moderating throughout the debate — cut Ford’s response off to go to commercial.

The second topic of the evening was finances, which began with Ford repeating his widely-disputed claim of saving the city a billion dollars and that the city has the lowest taxes in North America (which is not correct).

The second round of debate went even worse than the first, featuring Soknacki yelling and pointing his finger at Ford, who laughed and turned away.

“The question will be who is best to replace Rob Ford?” Soknacki described the 2014 campaign later in the debate.

While most of the heat was between Ford and any one of the other four candidates, Chow and Tory had their own moment midway through the debate.

“I don’t really need to take any lessons from you, because we’re not a golf course right now,” Chow shot at Tory.

The criminal investigation which began after the Mayor Ford crack video remains the biggest wild card in the 2014 election. A recent police search warrant lists the mayor as a “person of interest” in their extortion case against his friend, alleged drug dealer Alexander Lisi.

The election will be held October 27.