There are some 26 candidates registered to run for mayor of Toronto. Mainline media has chosen to listen to six of them, discarding the rest as unworthy of our attention.

It’s not that we’ve examined them all, interviewed them, tested their ideas and found them wholly untried and, as such, only six are suitable for the most rigorous of test during a 10-month election campaign.

No, with some fairly weak criteria, we’ve lazily made our choices and told the electorate these are the ones worth considering. We’ve fallen back on our experience, which teaches that among the 26 are kooks and crazies, bigots and dumbbells, mad egomaniacal attention-seekers who can barely get themselves out of bed. And, as such, we blithely ignore all but the established candidates.

So, now, at all-candidate meetings for the mayoral hopefuls, only six are given a place at the podium. The rest are shut out as debate conveners cite a variety of reasons, most of them uncomfortably stated.

The truth is, we find it inconvenient to examine all the registrants. A mayoral debate becomes too cumbersome when opened up to all comers.

“The three-ring circus would become a (26)-ring circus,” says Ryerson University professor Myer Siemiatycki. “It’d be totally unproductive and clearly not feasible.”

So, we attach a stamp of approval on a few of them, using some imperfect criteria.

To wit, if you are a city councillor then you are automatically given a pass to credibility — no matter your views. How else to explain that Giorgio Mammoliti is given access to the debate podium night after night, while better equipped representatives are held at bay?

I know that from just talking to the other Rocco in the race, the rejected one, the young lawyer whose reasoned positions have not been heard, much less digested. Where Mammoliti sounds like a shrill, even irresponsible, publicity hound — proposing to arm bylaw enforcement officers, impose curfew, setting up red-light districts and gambling dens to pay for municipal services — Rocco Achampong, 31, sounds more like a mayor of a sophisticated city.

But few even know the candidate exists.

“Opinion makers have decided he’s untested, not from the established political class, and said, ‘We won’t even give him an audience,’ says Achampong, the other Rocco. “I don’t know if that is fair. Before I dismiss anyone, at least, I give them a voice.

“It’s been a humbling process. I’ve never been simply ignored. I’ve always been a very serious individual. I expected you guys would say, ‘You are too young. You are unsuited intellectually.’ I thought you would seek a credible basis to reject someone.”

It’s not all ad hoc, of course. Rob Ford, Joe Pantalone, George Smitherman and Mammoliti get an automatic pass because they’ve been elected by a constituency and have a public record. Rocco Rossi headed up the Liberal Party of Canada, and, as such, has some bona fides. Sarah Thomson? That’s a bit more difficult, as she has no public record of note. But she is female.

The selection doesn’t seem rigorous enough, though. Rather, it seems skewed towards the status quo — another means of shutting out new blood.

The Star will no doubt sponsor a mayoral debate this fall. And the question will again emerge: Who to invite?

Talking with Professor Siemiatycki, the idea came up to “give one of the others a chance to distinguish themselves from the pack.”

How about staging a pre-debate “playoff” with all the “fringe’ candidates and send the winner to the main debate to go up against the chosen ones?

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Not perfect, but it is an improvement. I feel better already.

Royson James usually appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Email: rjames@thestar.ca