So John Tory - Ontario´s perpetual bridesmaid and Toronto´s reluctant bride-to-be - has called off the wedding.
There is now great wailing and gnashing of teeth about a supposed "gaping hole on the right" and "void on the right" in the forthcoming Toronto mayoralty race as a result of Tory´s decision to avoid one final political humiliation in his lacklustre pursuit of elected office.
Whos´kidding who? This a pure case of "the emperor has no clothes" if I´ve ever seen one.
I´m going to set the record straight, if no one else will.
John Tory is a really nice guy (I can tell you that from personal experience) with a razor-sharp intellect and great skills as a committee member, a facilitator and a mediator.
But he´s a complete loser as a frontline street brawler and he has the political survival instincts of a rabbit.
Before his announcement Thursday that he would not run for mayor of Toronto in this fall´s municipal election, Tory was hailed as the clear frontrunner and the man to beat.
Baloney. Pure and utter crapdoodle.

Tory would have lost the the 2010 mayor´s race - just as he lost the 2003 mayor´s race to David Miller; just as he lost the 2007 Ontario election to Dalton McGuinty´s woeful Liberals; just as he lost his own riding in that 2007 election (an almost unheard-of feat for a major party leader); just as he lost a subsequent byelection bid in a supposedly safe riding while desperately trying to get into the provincial Legislature; and just as he lost the leadership of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party in 2009 - supposedly a hari-kiri act of his own choosing, but with a lot of other "friendly" hands helping him hold the gutting blade. Oh, did I mention that John Tory was also campaign manager for the disastrous Kim Campbell 1993 federal election bid that ultimately resulted in the demolition of the national Progressive Conservative Party of Canada?
John Tory was never the frontrunner - declared candidate or otherwise - in the 2010 Toronto mayor´s race. Frankly, no one ever wants to be declared the frontrunner this early in a campaign - it makes you the target for every lightning bolt and usually leaves the "frontrunner" battered, besmirched and unelected by the time a long, grinding campaign is finished. The winner is usually another candidate who has made a big entry then wisely hung a little further back in the early going, paced himself or herself, given the frontrunner a painful kick where possible, and then charged to the front, fresh and strong, closer to the finish line.
Former Ontario cabinet minister George Smitherman, Dalton McGunity´s butcher boy, has been the clear frontrunner in the 2010 mayor´s race from the moment Furious George put out the unofficial word he was eying the job. Smitherman is canny enough and practical enough to gladly hang the "frontrunner" tag of that stalking horse, John Tory, for as long as he could possibly get away with it.
And just exactly where is this "gaping hole on the right" on the political spectrum created by the elimination of Tory from the scene? There is none. Tory was nevera right-winger. He was always a born centrist, an appeaser, a builder of coalitions and nebulous, wishy-washy "common ground" agendas that everyone from Genghis Khan to Mahatma Gandhi could subscribe to without missing a beat.
What good would a truly right-wing candidate do in a Toronto mayoralty election anyway except provide comic relief? Toronto does not elect idealogically fundamentalist right-wingers to positions of power. We choose centrists who lean to the left or right, but never too much or for too long (goodbye, David Miller). Even our civic councillors who supposedly make up the "right wing" of the current Toronto council would, for the most part, be considered left-wingnuts on an Alberta municipal council.
The only truly right-wing thing that John Tory ever did was, as provincial PC leader, to propose public funding for private faith-based schools in Ontario. And that was a totally cynical, calculated political act designed to win enough votes for a slim provincial majority from religious fundamentalists (of all stripes) and non-urban conservative voters. And of course it backfired, because Tory never did have a good instinctive read on the people of Ontario, or the people of Toronto for that matter.
Tory has always reminded me of former (briefly, because of his own ineptitude) PM Joe Clark, a political junkie, a nice guy with a good mind, and a complete putz when it came to making the right political decision. Neither of them has the deep, driving gut feeling that they know the "right" thing to do in any given crisis - sometimes even when the "right" thing they know in their guts isn´t the thing they would rationally choose to do based simply on calculation and inclination.
A guy who does fit that bill is George Smitherman. Smitherman´s another centrist- in many ways probably more right-wing than Tory ever could be. But Smitherman is a realist, a pragmatist and a politican with the instincts of a prize-winning truffle pig (that´s actually a compliment, folks). I don´t think Smitherman has even made a political decision based on whether it fits a left-wing or right-wing agenda. He has made and will make his moves based on whether a particular course of action is effective in getting him to where he wants to be get. Sometimes that destination is all about him (to the detriment of others), but usually it´s a group objective - whether the group be his political party, his social affiliation, his city or his country. That´s the kind of partisan you want on your side.
Furious George has often been accused of being a bully. That´s usually the kind of criticism that´s made by faceless cowards who are too tremulous to disagree publicly with someone they oppose - and thus face the consequences of their actions. Smitherman has never been afraid to speak his mind or get into a good fight. He´s tough-minded and ruthless enough to usually win. And when he doesn´t, he doesn´t bitch and moan. He licks his wounds, turns his snarl into a laugh, gets back on his feet and moves on to the next battle.
So is that a bully? I don´t know, but if it is then it´s the kind of bully this current dysfunctional, myopic city council needs to get it dealing with Toronto´s massive and myriad problems in a serious, cohesive, productive way.
With Smitherman as the frontrunner, who else is there?
The current No. 2 is Liberal bagman Rocco Rossi, who ran John Tory´s failed 2003 mayoral campaign. Rossi´s another smart guy with pretty good instincts and bags of money available to him if he shows signs of being able to win the election. He´s a backroom boy but says he plans to make himself a top-of-mind name brand well before election day rolls around. I like Rossi well enough, but Smitherman and Rossi are sort of Tweedledum and Tweedledee. They´re both Liberal insiders, guys who grew up on the streets of Toronto, self-made success stories. They both know that the candidate who does it right can be king of Toronto for a long, long time and wield power on a national level that far exceeds that of most provincial premiers.
So if I have to choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee, I´m going to pick the original - Smitherman, the guy who has run for political office repeatedly, who has put his ass on the line time after time, a known quantity, a proven fighter and winner, a tough guy with charm who is probably more suited to the wheeling and dealing, conniving and coddling, threatening and arm-twisting of city hall than to the collegiality and factional committee-room appeasement of Queen´s Park. What does Rossi have to offer in return? He ran Tory´s failed 2003 campaign for mayor. No contest. (Rossi´s candidacy, by the way, said a lot about Tory´s potential 2010 candidacy for mayor: Either Tory wasn´t running and the way was clear for a Tory loyalist, or one of the key players in Tory´s camp was tired of his dithering and considered him just another schmo anyway.
As for mayoralty candidates currently on council, we already have Giorgio Mammoliti as a declared entry. He´s a self-serving showboat who would love to be the new Mel Lastman, but who probably doesn´t have the currency - either financial or political - to make it to the first post.
Then there´s pretty boy Adam Giambrone, darling of the left and David Miller´s heir apparent, who already has Internet domain rights to adamgiambroneformayor.com. However, Giambrone has made such a mess of his tenure as TTC chairman that he almost certainly will have to clean his slate before hoping to win the top job. If he does decide to run for mayor, it will just be a test of the waters and his name will certainly be on the ballot for his old ward seat on council come the fall.
Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone will certainly put forth his name as the candidate of the left, that´s just for appearances´sake and isn´t even worth discussing.
Other councillors who may consider a mayoralty run out of personal vanity  but shouldn´t include: Rob Ford, Denzil Minnan-Wong and Shelley Carroll. Current councillors who have already wisely announced that they are not candidates for the big job are Doug Holyday, Karen Stintz and Michael Thompson.
Any councillor who is rethinking his or decision on running for the big job based solely on John Tory´s decision not to run is playing a fool´s game.
Tory´s decision did not "open the field up" - it just reduced the field of losers by one.
Yesterday I heard John Tory described as "charismatic" and "the best mayor Toronto never had." He is neither. He might have made a better mayor than David Miller. Maybe not. We´ll know know. But John Tory was never "best" at anything in politics except "second best." I know that sounds rough and unfair, but politics is rough and unfair. John Tory took his lumps but never had the royal jelly to turn them into political sugar.

 

By Alan Parker for Toronto News 24