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The first question for Rob Ford is a no-brainer: “Why are you always in trouble?”

What other city councillor carries such colourful baggage into the race for mayor? In 2006, security guards turfed him from a Leafs game at the ACC, after Ford, moist and garrulous by his own admission, berated some poor couple. In 2008, prosecutors charged him with assault after an incident with his wife, Renata, at their Etobicoke home. Charges were dropped, but Ford left an impression, standing with his 3-year-old daughter in his arms, teaching her to say, “No comment.”

Colleague Kyle Rae tells the Star: “Rob’s a buffoon.”

That’s for starters. Wait until we get into his life story. One feels the need for Tolstoy.

So why is Ford laughing at the opening question?

He throws back his big blond head and guffaws, an odd pose, given he’s practically got no neck. He’s all shoulders and football player bulk, 285 pounds on a 5’10” frame.

“I’m not always in trouble. Why would you say that?” he asks coyly.

“Look, I think it’s comical because it’s just not true. There’s no politician down there who works harder for their constituents than I do and I watch the taxpayers’ money. I guess that’s why I’m doing good in the mayor’s race so far and why I’ve been elected with 70 percent of the vote in my riding.”

He’s right about how he’s doing. It’s been interesting since Ford, 40, declared his candidacy in late March. A Toronto Star-Angus Reid poll a week ago pegged his support at 27 percent of decided voters, only seven points behind long-time campaigner George Smitherman. The left’s Joe Pantalone had 14 percent, with the right’s Rocco Rossi a point behind. Admittedly, it’s a small, early sample, with 51 percent undecided.

Still, could Ford’s early numbers be a sign Tea Party politics — the kind that lu-uves Sarah Palin — are drifting northward to Canada’s largest city and making sense to voters weary of a left-wing mayor’s record?

Could Robbie Buffoon have the last laugh on election day?

“Since he came late into the race, he’s surprised people. He’s handled himself very well, almost demure, when people expect him to flail and scream,” says Jodi Shanoff, senior vice-president, Angus Reid Public Opinion.

“The poll is a reaction to the clarity with which he entered the race and staked out a claim to the right end of the spectrum. Rossi, not as clearly. . . . I’m curious, but it’s a long, long road before Rob Ford can think of himself as mayor of Toronto.”

Ford’s the guy who pays his own office expenses and wants to put city spending under the microscope. Get rid of $60 car registration fees. “What are we, the ministry of transport?”

He delights in describing councillors with bloated budgets, who eat in fancy restaurants, ride in big limousines and bop around the world. “If you want to go on vacation, use your own money.”

Frankly, it’s refreshing for a reporter to listen to a politician who actually knows something about bedbugs in Toronto public housing, and gets flushed-in-the-face angry/

“They call me a buffoon and, if watching taxpayers’ money and standing up and making sure councillors are accountable, well, sure . . . maybe I am,” he says. “I can’t help it if councillors don’t like me.”

He talks to the Star on a recent Thursday at Deco Labels & Tags, the Etobicoke company co-founded by his late father, Douglas Ford. He’s chief financial officer and offers a proud tour of a wholly family-owned operation that employs 250 in Toronto, Chicago and New Jersey and does close to $100 million in annual sales.

We’re in an office with a framed photo of his father, former offensive guard for the East York Argos, business leader, philanthropist, Conservative MPP in the Mike Harris government and, to his youngest son, an idol. His dad grew up dirt-poor in the east end, the youngest of nine, leaving school in Grade 5 to help his mother, known to the grandkids as “Big Nana.”

“My mom says I’m the spitting image of my dad,” says Ford, beaming. Douglas and Diane Ford had three other children: Kathy; Doug, who runs the Chicago operation and his brother’s campaign; and Randy, who runs Deco in Toronto.

Ford can’t get over his dad’s death. On July 1, 2006, he announced he had colon cancer. He was dead within three months, at 73. Ford calls it “the worst experience I’ve ever gone through.”

“What did he ever do to anyone? It was so sad to see someone who helped out so many people — he donated millions to the poorest of the poor — have to suffer and die like that. He was just gasping at the end. If you’ve ever heard a death rattle, it’s a ghastly affair.”

A long pause.

“Oh man. It’s rough. Terrible. It makes me upset when I think about it.”

Ford is still seething: “He could have lived a lot longer. There was nothing wrong, you know. . . . All his friends (are) still alive. They’re all 75, like my mom. He just got gypped 10 years and I don’t know why.

“He’s the last guy who deserved to go through what he went through . . . he taught Sunday school . . . There are hardened criminals, murderers, that don’t suffer like he suffered . . . . But, like you said, life’s not fair . . . I just can’t figure it out.”

This family is, to say the least, interesting.

“Like my dad said, ‘Many are called, few are chosen.’ It’s on his tombstone. The Ford family was chosen,” he says.

In a manner of speaking, perhaps.

“Our family has been through everything — from murder to drugs to being successful in business,” he says. “We’ve dealt with the very, very poor and the worst, worst tragedies . . . nobody can tell me a story that can shock.”

He talks about his sister, complaining, “the media never got it straight.”

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How’s this for an explanation: “The killer wasn’t her ex-husband, it was an old boyfriend.”

As Ford tells it, Kathy Ford’s first boyfriend was Mike, before she married Jeff and had a daughter.

After divorcing Jeff, she lived six years with Ennio, bearing a son. She left Ennio and went back to Mike, and they rented a cottage up north.

Ford: In 1998, “from what I was told (by the kids), Ennio knocked on the cottage door and Mike answered it and Ennio shot him in the head” with a sawed-off shotgun. Charges were laid; Ennio went to prison for manslaughter.

In 2005, Ford says someone else “shot the top of her head off.” Press reports suggest it was an accident; two men were charged with firearms-related offences.

She’s functioning well, he says, living with her two children and on methadone for her heroin addiction.

“Bizarre, yeah, it’s really bizarre,” he says. “We all backed Kathy 100 percent; maybe what she was doing was wrong, but you don’t just throw people out into the street for doing the wrong stuff.”

And that thing with his wife?

“Nothing happened. My wife got mad at me. She made an allegation that wasn’t true and the charges never even got to court . . . I’ve never laid a hand on a woman in my life. Rule No. 1 in the Ford family: You never touch a woman.”

Other incidents seem muddier.

Did he tell a couple at the Air Canada Centre that the wife should “go to Iran and get raped and shot?” He says he didn’t, but doesn’t clarify. In a letter to city hall, they claimed he did. He apologized.

“That was just stupidity. I feel terrible about it. My wife and I had a little bit too much to drink . . . I made a mistake that will never happen again.”

A Carleton University political science student who left university two credits short of graduating to help his sister with her personal problems, (and former centre for the Ravens football team), he estimates he’s made 10,000 home visits in his 10 years on council.

Ford is itching to get at the Toronto Community Housing Corporation. “They treat people worse like animals . . . There needs to be a good cleaning at TCHC, and I’m the one to do it.”

Rexdale resident Angela Wilson says of her councillor: “He always cares, he listens and looks after things. He’s a good person and he’d be a great mayor.”

Critics roll their eyes.

“I don’t believe city council would follow Rob Ford,” says Toronto-Centre-Rosedale’s Kyle Rae. “He’s not informed, he doesn’t read the agenda, doesn’t read reports . . . a buffoon.”

Rae points to an Easter Monday 10 p.m. call to his office from Ford that had his staff giggling. In a slow voice, Ford asks for support. Rae: “Sounds like he just woke up or is under the influence.”

More guffaws from Ford. “I wasn’t drunk and I haven’t smoked pot in 25 years . . . You call every councillor and MPP twice, and see how you sound.”

Listen to Ford’s late night appeal for political support from Kyle Rae at thestar.com.