John Tory has been elected mayor of Toronto. The Ford era is over.

Tory promised “sensible, competent, accountable” leadership after four years of scandal and upheaval under Rob Ford. His win over second-place Doug Ford and third-place Olivia Chow, in an election with record turnout, is a repudiation of the brothers whose unruly behaviour and incendiary remarks outraged most of the city. It heralds a return to normalcy in local government.

“Voters want their elected officials to get down to work on the priorities that matter most to them: better transit, more jobs, an end to the gridlock that is choking our streets,” Tory said in his victory speech.

“And the electorate has spoken on one other issue: Torontonians want to see an end to the division that has paralyzed city hall the last few years. And to all of that, I say: Toronto, I hear you. I hear you loud and clear. You want results. And together with the city council, we will deliver.”

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Tory received about 40 per cent of the vote, Ford about 34 per cent, Chow about 23 per cent.

Tory’s comfortable victory, by a margin of more than 60,000 votes, was slightly closer than the double-digit cruise suggested by the most recent opinion polls. Ford’s competitiveness demonstrated the enduring loyalty of the family’s base of supporters, concentrated in low-income neighbourhoods in Etobicoke and Scarborough.

But the massive turnout underscored the extent to which Toronto voters sought change. More than 980,000 people cast ballots, 61 per cent of the electorate; the previous post-amalgamation turnout record, set in 2010, was 51 per cent. A full two-thirds chose someone other than Ford.

“As your new mayor, I will work with the council that the people of Toronto elected tonight in moving Toronto not left, not right, but forward. I will be a balanced and accountable leader. And we’re going to do this together,” Tory said.

Tory’s win came as a relief to Premier Kathleen Wynne, whose Liberal MPPs, including several ministers, overwhelmingly backed the former Progressive Conservative leader. Told of the election result during a trade mission in China, Wynne said, “Hallelujah.”

Tory, who launched his campaign in a distant third place, took the lead three months ago. But the steady polling trend line belies the mayhem of a campaign in which the celebrity incumbent left the city for two months to receive treatment for drug and alcohol addiction, was diagnosed with a rare cancer, and was replaced on the ballot by his brother a mere 45 days before the vote.





“It was a unique campaign,” Rob Ford said. “I don’t think there’s ever been a campaign like it.”

Tory rose on the strength of his centrist good-government message, agreeably staid personality and a single signature policy proposal, the “SmartTrack” surface rail line he claimed would “solve” the city’s traffic congestion problem “quickly.” With the help of endorsement upon endorsement from members of the Liberal caucus, he beat one-time front-runner Chow, a former New Democrat MP, in the critical battle for middle-of-the-road voters.

Rob Ford will remain mayor through November. Tory, 60, will become Toronto’s 65th chief magistrate on Dec. 1. He will quickly face big decisions.

Council will decide in 2015 on the future of the elevated eastern portion of the Gardiner Expressway; Tory favours a proposal to reconfigure the expressway rather than taking it down. And council will vote in 2015 on whether to allow jets to fly from the island airport; Tory has not taken a position, and he may have to recuse himself from the debate because of a potential conflict of interest.

Tory said his top priority is addressing the city’s traffic and transportation woes. He will soon embark on complicated discussions with the provincial and federal governments over SmartTrack, which he pitched as a 53-kilometre, 22-stop, $8-billion project built in no more than seven years. His proposal dovetails with Wynne’s proposal to electrify GO Transit lines.

“I think it’s got a lot to recommend it,” Wynne said. “It’s something that we can work with.”

The mayor has just one vote on the 45-member council. Tory will have to deal with a very vocal and very famous antagonist: Rob Ford was elected to his former Etobicoke North council seat despite his inability to campaign.

Ford, still dealing with cancer that he has said he has a “50-50” chance of surviving, told the Toronto Sun that he “will be running for mayor in four years.” He was combative in his victory speech, saying he would “never, ever give up” and telling supporters to “just watch in four more years, folks.”

Still, Doug Ford’s defeat effectively concludes the chaotic and oft-surreal period in which Toronto became a fixture on late-night U.S. comedy shows — Ford was lampooned by HBO’s John Oliver for four minutes the night before the election — and the mayor was the world’s most famous municipal politician.

Doug Ford, a conservative councillor and a businessman, ran a heavily negative and frequently dishonest campaign focused on Tory, whom he called an establishment “elite” figure uninterested in “the common folk.” Adopting much of his brother’s successful populist rhetoric, Ford presented himself as a champion of low taxes, subways, and suburbanites neglected by city hall.

“I know this is not the result that all of us wanted tonight, but I also have the satisfaction of knowing that we ran a phenomenal, phenomenal campaign, and for that every one of our team should be extremely proud,” he said in his concession speech. “I will go to sleep knowing that I gave it absolutely everything.”

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Ford returned to the hyperbole that has characterized his public statements.

“Friends, it is rewarding to know we are living in a much better shape than we found this city four years ago. We introduced the idea of government for the people,” he said, using a phrase popularized by Abraham Lincoln.

Chow began the campaign as the clear favourite. After months of attempting to establish her bona fides as a budget-minded centrist, she altered her message after Labour Day — newly identifying herself as a “progressive,” proposing a tax hike on the rich to pay for an expansion of student meal programs, and touting social policies intended to help marginalized people and neighbourhoods.

She, too, attacked Tory relentlessly, joining with Ford in an uncoordinated late-campaign assault on the untested technical and financial components of the SmartTrack plan. Tory brushed off his two main opponents as needlessly negative “members of the can’t-do-it committee,” and their criticism never appeared to resonate.

Chow delivered an upbeat concession speech in which she urged voters to heed the famous final words of her late husband, NDP leader Jack Layton: “Hope is better than fear.”

“Here’s the thing I want you to remember most of all: keep the faith. There is a great definition of faith that goes like this: faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen. So all of us here have the power to bring hope through our actions. So it’s up to us to make hope happen, all of us,” Chow said.

“This is a good city filled with good people. Ask that question. What can we do with each other, for each other? Then go out and be the answer yourself.”

Ford is likely to return to his printing firm, Deco Labels and Tags, as he had planned to do in November, before he suddenly became a candidate. Chow’s future is uncertain. She said she would “keep fighting for the causes that matter.”

The campaign formally ran for 10 months, informally even longer. Tory and Chow participated in more than 50 debates each, on topics as varied as accessibility, the arts and Latino political participation.

But transit was the overwhelming focus throughout. Chow was first to issue a major proposal, promising to immediately improve rush-hour bus service by 10 per cent. She was forced to make her proposal less specific when TTC officials said a quick fix wasn’t possible during peak periods.

Tory, who initially led voters to believe the downtown subway relief line was his top priority, radically changed the race when he instead unveiled SmartTrack, a different project. He mentioned SmartTrack at every available opportunity, demonstrating more message discipline than he had during previous campaigns.

“Torontonians want a future where solutions for traffic and transit are paramount,” he said in his speech. “And so we will get to work.”

Tory had lost consecutive provincial elections, and he also lost the 2003 mayoral election, in which he had not been favoured. Chow claimed throughout the spring that she was “the one person” who could beat Rob Ford. Her argument fizzled in late July, when Tory overtook her in the polls for the first time. He never trailed again.

Strategic anti-Ford voting appeared to be a significant factor in the outcome. When fourth-place candidate David Soknacki dropped out of the race in September, he said the election had turned into a “referendum on Rob Ford” rather than a clash of ideas.

Rob Ford took his name off the ballot two days later. He had run a largely positive campaign focused on his policy achievements, taking personal credit for the “booming” city while asking voters to overlook his crack cocaine scandal and other “personal” failings. Doug Ford’s abbreviated campaign, launched long after Tory established himself as the man to beat, took on a sharply different tone.

There were 65 people running for mayor. Ari Goldkind, a lawyer who promised tax increases to pay for transit, placed fourth with about 0.4 per cent of the vote. The others shared 2.5 per cent.

With files from Betsy Powell, Jennifer Pagliaro, Paul Moloney and Robert Benzie

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