Mike Layton will not run for mayor of Toronto

Thestar.com
March 2, 2023

Mike Layton will not be the next mayor of Toronto.

The former city councillor, considered by many to be the progressive with the best shot of replacing John Tory, plans to announce Thursday he won’t contest the June 26 byelection, the Star has learned.

In an exclusive interview, Layton said he was honoured by all the messages he’s received asking him to run. In recent weeks his phone has been lit up with calls and messages, and strangers have stopped him at the grocery store encouraging him to jump in the race.

He said that support forced him to give “serious thought” to entering the mayoral election. But he said he opted not to for the same reasons he announced last year he wouldn’t seek re-election as councillor: He wants to spend more time with his partner and their children, and take a new job focused on climate change.

“I’m doing this based on what I’m feeling in my heart, and I think I can do no wrong when I am doing it for my family and for my community,” Layton said, citing the long hours and public duties of the mayor’s role that would keep him away from his daughters, who are five- and seven-years-old.

In a written statement he plans to release Thursday, Layton, 42, said that while serving in public office “I have missed far too many dinners and bedtimes. I want to commit myself to work that allows me to be a more present father.”

He wouldn’t say what his next job will be, but hopes to announce his plans “in the coming weeks.”

Layton’s decision to sit out the election leaves Toronto’s NDP-aligned left-wing establishment without a star candidate in what’s expected to be a competitive contest with multiple centre and centre-right challengers.

Layton, who entered politics with name recognition from his late father Jack Layton, a city councillor and later federal NDP leader, got more than double the mayoral support of other city hall veterans in a recent Forum Research poll.

Despite the hopes pinned on him by Toronto’s progressives, Layton predicted he would have no regrets about staying out of the byelection.

“I made the decision for the right reasons,” he said.

“Are you ever going to regret spending more time with your kids?”

Other potential candidates on the left have been waiting on Layton’s decision before deciding whether to get into the race. They include Parkdale-High Park NDP MPP Bhutila Karpoche, an epidemiologist and the first Tibetan elected to public office in North America.

Josh Matlow (Ward 12, Toronto-St. Paul’s), a progressive without strong links to the NDP who fiercely criticized centre-right Tory on the Scarborough subway extension, encampment clearings and other issues, is also considering a run, as is Liberal Scarbough-Guildwood MPP Mitzie Hunter.

A mix of Conservative and Liberal organizers are readying campaigns for former Davenport councillor and housing advocate Ana Bailão, as well as Brad Bradford, the city councillor for Ward 19 Beaches-East York and chair of council’s housing committee.

Other conservative organizers are coalescing around Mark Saunders, who became Toronto’s first Black police chief in 2015 and, since retirement in 2020, ran unsuccessfully as a provincial Progressive Conservative and has been the Premier Doug Ford government’s adviser on Ontario Place redevelopment.

Layton wouldn’t say which candidate he might support in the byelection, or who he’d like to take up the progressive mantle now that he’s out.

But he said Toronto is facing big challenges in the housing crisis, inequality, and climate change, and called the mayoral byelection “a big opportunity.” He urged Torontonians to “pay close attention and vote for a candidate who is genuinely committed to making life better for people.”

Over his 12 years at city hall, Layton was council’s de facto environmentalist-in-chief. The cyclist and climate campaigner announced in July he wouldn’t seek re-election in Ward 11 University-Rosedale.

In the months that followed he didn’t rule out a future run for mayor, but the election for the city’s top job came years earlier than anticipated when Tory unexpectedly announced his resignation on Feb. 10, months into his third term.

Many progressives had hoped that either Layton or his best friend, former councillor and health board chair Joe Cressy, would seek the mayor’s chair and tilt Toronto to the political left after more than a dozen years of right-leaning rule.

But Cressy, now a senior executive at George Brown College, quickly ruled out any imminent return to politics, saying he previously held mayoral ambitions but, at the moment, “I couldn’t be the mayor our city deserves while being the type of parent I want to be.”

In an interview Wednesday, Cressy said Layton would have made “a spectacular mayor,” but commended him for resisting the pressure to run.

“While I am obviously disappointed that our city won’t have Mike Layton leading it, I am absolutely thrilled for my good friend Mike,” Cressy said.

He said that amidst “the burden of expectations placed upon him” Layton had “chosen his family.”

“And that’s an action too few people in public life, and in particular men, do.”

Although he’s out of the upcoming mayor’s race, on Wednesday Layton wouldn’t say his political career is over.

“I wouldn’t classify this as the end. But maybe the end of a chapter in my life and career,” he said.

Tory, 68, resigned February 15 after confirming to the Star that he had been involved in a relationship with a 31-year-old woman that started when she worked for him at city hall. Tory, who is married with four children, has said he’s going to take time to repair relationships with his family.

Mayoral candidates will be able to register between April 3 and May 12.