Quote:
Originally Posted by ac888yow
Equally fun is watching and reading his opponents reactions to the fact that he may actually win again. And if he does get defeated, their consolation prize is ... another conservative mayor.
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He isn't really all that conservative, though. Not in the traditional sense, anyway. At municipal levels, liberal and conservative aren't even all that meaningful. Thunder Bay has a card-carrying Federal Conservative/Ontario PC member as mayor who supports social housing, social services, legacy infrastructure projects and has presided over four tax increases in a row.
Rob Ford is so ineffective as a mayor that his political positions barely factor into anything anymore, and it will be the same if he gets re-elected unless he truly has cleaned up his act, in which case, he
could very well turn out to be a somewhat decent mayor. I mean, weirder things have happened to him in the past two years!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Allan83
This is the big question. Why don’t good people want to run for office in Toronto? What is it about the political culture there, or the underlying conditions in general, that dissuade good people from running, and that make Rob Ford a realistic choice in many people’s eyes?
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Qualified people don't run for municipal council for the following reasons:
1. It does not pay enough. Most of them already earn significantly more than anyone on city council, and the pay cut and time and effort involved means that they'd have to be really, really dedicated to serving to put forth the effort to get elected to the position. I earn only a few bucks more than minimum wage per hour and I have a higher salary than two of our city councillors, and that's including the fact that they get travel allowances and extra pay for the boards they sit on! (Two of our councillors don't do much board work.)
2. There is virtually no privacy, and you're constantly being insulted. There are always people who hate everything the city does and use city councillors and the mayor as scapegoats. People complain about politicians not listening, but that's mainly because 90% of what they're being told by people is insults and ignorance, usually about things that they can't even deal with at that level of government.
3. It's too risky. Lots of people run for government with a vision and a list of goals that they want to achieve, but very few ever reach them. It's fruitless. All those people that run across Canada for one reason or another have a higher completion rate than politicians.
4. Lastly, after considering all of this, actually running for office is expensive. In Thunder Bay, candidates spend close to $80,000 for mayoral seats. In Toronto it's at least ten times that, I think Ford spent several million. You have to pretty much beg for the funding, and if you lose, you've let down every single person who gave you money. The guy who chose one of my city's PC candidates last spring (who turned out to be an embarrassing, gaffe-prone dud) is basically a social pariah in our local business community now, and he wasn't even the person who ran!
That's why decent, skilled candidates don't apply for positions on city council. Especially not the mayor's seat!
But consider, that in Ontario, we have a weak mayor system. Thunder Bay's mayor is literally just the councillor who goes to conventions and makes decisions official. In the end, like Rob Ford, he is outnumbered by the entire city council, and if they disagree, there is virtually nothing he can do to change that other than make one hell of an argument. And Rob Ford might be good at yelling, but
arguing is a skill he has yet to master.
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