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How the race to endorse candidates could change the way the next city council works

Progress Toronto and Team Tory are both weighing in on council races, hoping for a win for a candidate they can rely on.

Thestar.com
Sept. 29, 2022
Edward Keenan
OPINION

Toronto City Hall isn’t known as a place for parties. Mind you, back in the Rob Ford years, it was sometimes known as a place to paaaaar-taaaaaay!, but the generally reliable sedative effect of Mayor John Tory’s leadership style has put a stop to that.

That’s not what I meant, anyway. I meant that in Toronto city politics, there are no political parties. That may be kind of changing in this election, but I’ll come back to that in a minute.

As of now, there’s no party system in municipal politics. Not officially. Some people would suggest you see something like one in the fairly reliable alliances that appear in council votes, and in council’s behaviour. It’s true the place can be like a high school in its cliquishness and often petty interpersonal dramas: “Mean Girls” except balder and with a bigger budget.

But there’s a key difference between that and a political party system, with the kind of vote-whipped iron discipline, rote talking points, and automatic oppositional polarization that have so warped provincial and federal politics. The alliances at city hall are less like the uniformed lineups of an NFL football game and more like the shifting ad hoc team-ups you see emerge during a WWE battle royale.

I mean that in a good way. Not least because you can actually hear some genuine arguments about things when you have 26 people who answer individually to their own voters rather than to a party boss.

But it also means you get some collaboration across standard ideological lines. Like how, way back when, Jack Layton was kind of the leader of the opposition during Mel Lastman’s mayoralty, but also spearheaded Lastman’s efforts to deal with homelessness. Like how former council flame-thrower Giorgio Mammoliti could wind up on lefty mayor David Miller’s cabinetlike executive committee, then also serve as Ford’s enforcer.

Or more recently, how conservative Tory and progressive Joe Cressy formed a kind of partnership -- most visibly while confronting the pandemic, but prior to that in opposing public health funding cuts, planning parkland, establishing safe injection sites, and on a range of other issues.

The need to line up votes on every issue usually forces the mayor to collaborate, often to moderate, and to participate in a more diverse ongoing discussion with colleagues.

Is that changing? Not officially. But it has been noteworthy in this election to see more formal electoral slates starting to line up. Mayor John Tory has been endorsing council candidates in a number of ridings, apparently trying to firm up a team he can rely on to support him. He’s endorsed 10 so far from among the city’s 25 wards, some long-standing conservative allies (such as council speaker Frances Nunziata and budget chief Gary Crawford) and a few newcomers in vacant seats (including Markus O’Brien Fehr and Grant Gonzales).

Meanwhile, Progress Toronto, a progressive non-profit advocacy group, has released its own list of nine endorsements. There are battles between the two lists: Alejandra Bravo against Gonzales in the open seat in Davenport, Chiara Padovani taking on Nunziata, Kevin Rupasinghe versus Crawford.

Today, there are five wards where a Tory endorsee faces off against a Progress Toronto candidate. There may turn out to be more if Tory issues more endorsements -- and as Progress Toronto announces its list of anti-endorsements of candidates they plan to actively oppose.

So how much effect do these endorsements have? It’s hard to tell precisely. The nod itself probably has some impact -- especially in a race where all the candidates are relatively unknown. But when those endorsements come with organizational muscle or active campaign work, they’re even more valuable. In this case, at least some of the endorsements do come with on-the-ground help. Progress Toronto’s list is small specifically because it only chooses people it can actively participate to help.

John Tory has also sometimes lent real-world weight to his support, such as when he recorded robocalls for Mark Grimes in 2018. For what it’s worth, Tory campaign Svengali Nick Kouvalis has said publicly that Tory’s late-stage endorsement saved that council seat for Grimes last time around (after Kouvalis himself “moved to Etobicoke for the last nine days of the campaign” to help). Tory has not waited until the end of this campaign to weigh in on Grimes’s rematch with challenger (and Progress Toronto candidate) Amber Morley.

An equally interesting question is what effect these kind of formalized slates might have on the resulting council. Will councillors elected under the Progress Toronto banner feel compelled to act and vote in solidarity with their colleagues elected under the same banner? Will a Team Tory elected in part due to his benevolent intervention be more easily whipped by the mayor -- seeing themselves more like his employees on council than as independently elected officials whose only allegiance is to their constituents?

And if Tory succeeds in electing a slate of councillors under his own banner, will he be inclined to find common cause with others, as he has done with Cressy, and did previously with the late Pam McConnell? Part of Tory’s brand as a middle-of-the-road people pleaser comes from his willingness -- sometimes out of necessity -- to make compromises and build a coalition outside his ideological comfort zone.

With new strong mayor powers provided through the indulgence of Premier Doug Ford, and with potentially more conservative councillors who owe him personal allegiance, does that spirit of compromise wane?

We aren’t going to know in advance. But it’s not hard to envision how what has been a (wild and fascinating) no-party zone could become a (sedate and predictable) party central in a hurry.

Toronto election teams (so far)

TEAM TORY

Candidates for city council endorsed by Mayor John Tory:

 

TEAM PROGRESS TORONTO

Candidates endorsed and supported by the progressive activist organization Progress Toronto: