It's official: DoFo running for mayor of T.O. in 2018
By Sue-Ann Levy, Toronto Sun
First posted: Friday, September 08, 2017 10:41 PM EDT | Updated: Friday, September 08, 2017 11:18 PM EDT
Ford Nation has been reborn and a new model Ford is set to drive the election agenda at City Hall in the next year.
Doug Ford made it official at a crammed Fordfest Friday evening: He’s taking on incumbent mayor John Tory in October 2018.
The hundreds of people who turned up for what is now the 23rd such event — many in Ford Nation T-shirts or waving Ford Nation flags — cheered and hollered when Doug Ford said he’s decided to “continue on Rob’s legacy.”
“Rob is looking down from heaven with a smile on his face,” he said.
Doug wasted no time delivering his populist message to “stop the out of control spending at City Hall” and slamming Tory, who he said in the past three years has “undone” all the hard work they did to save taxpayers money.
He contended transit is a mess, traffic has ground to a halt in the city and Torontonians have never seen higher taxes. He also slammed the current mayor for breaking one promise after another, focusing specifically on Tory’s attempts to toll the DVP and Gardiner (a move stopped, at least for now, by Premier Kathleen Wynne).
“This mayor is all talk and broken promises and no action,” Doug Ford said.
This will be the second match-up between the two men: Doug Ford, then a councillor, stepped into the 2014 race only six weeks before election day after his brother, Rob, was felled by an aggressive abdominal tumour.
Rob passed away in late March of 2016.
In the 2014 race — with only six weeks to campaign — Doug came a very respectable second to Tory, capturing 33.7% of the vote to Tory’s 40%.
There’s no doubt Tory is vulnerable — judging by the number of people who’ve already sharpened their knives and taken a stab at criticizing Ford.
While council is indeed more functional and less chaotic under Tory compared to Rob Ford, that sense of calm has come at a huge price — an inertia at City Hall, the reluctance by Tory to make hard decisions and repeated pandering to the leftists with funding for pet projects and agendas.
On the fiscal side, the combined capital, operating and rate-based budgets were up $900-million alone in 2017 compared to 2016 and the city has a risky, if not unholy, dependence on the Municipal Land Transfer Tax.
Tory has deferred a decision on the contracting out of garbage east of Yonge St. until after the 2018 election and his much-vaunted shake-up of Toronto Community Housing Corporation — following the task force recommendations of 18 months ago — is proceeding at a snail’s pace.
He didn’t win any friends on the Toronto Police Service either when he refused to show leadership on Pride’s decision to ban the police from marching in this year’s Pride parade.
That said, even a more restrained, less rough around the edges, Doug Ford will come into the race carrying his brother’s baggage. And there is plenty.
Tory and his supporters — both in the left-wing media and on the Gravy Train — will be doing anything and everything to remind voters of not only the chaos and addiction issues under Rob Ford, but what he has repeatedly claimed was the slashing of important city services.
Still, if anything, Ford will be asking the hard questions few in the media have done in the past three years.
“John Tory has had an easy ride up to now,” Ford said. “But believe me this is about to change...I plan to hold him accountable every day moving forward.”
slevy@postmedia.com
It's official: DoFo running for mayor of T.O. in 2018 | LEVY | Toronto & GTA | N
By Sue-Ann Levy, Toronto Sun
First posted: Friday, September 08, 2017 10:41 PM EDT | Updated: Friday, September 08, 2017 11:18 PM EDT
Ford Nation has been reborn and a new model Ford is set to drive the election agenda at City Hall in the next year.
Doug Ford made it official at a crammed Fordfest Friday evening: He’s taking on incumbent mayor John Tory in October 2018.
The hundreds of people who turned up for what is now the 23rd such event — many in Ford Nation T-shirts or waving Ford Nation flags — cheered and hollered when Doug Ford said he’s decided to “continue on Rob’s legacy.”
“Rob is looking down from heaven with a smile on his face,” he said.
Doug wasted no time delivering his populist message to “stop the out of control spending at City Hall” and slamming Tory, who he said in the past three years has “undone” all the hard work they did to save taxpayers money.
He contended transit is a mess, traffic has ground to a halt in the city and Torontonians have never seen higher taxes. He also slammed the current mayor for breaking one promise after another, focusing specifically on Tory’s attempts to toll the DVP and Gardiner (a move stopped, at least for now, by Premier Kathleen Wynne).
“This mayor is all talk and broken promises and no action,” Doug Ford said.
This will be the second match-up between the two men: Doug Ford, then a councillor, stepped into the 2014 race only six weeks before election day after his brother, Rob, was felled by an aggressive abdominal tumour.
Rob passed away in late March of 2016.
In the 2014 race — with only six weeks to campaign — Doug came a very respectable second to Tory, capturing 33.7% of the vote to Tory’s 40%.
There’s no doubt Tory is vulnerable — judging by the number of people who’ve already sharpened their knives and taken a stab at criticizing Ford.
While council is indeed more functional and less chaotic under Tory compared to Rob Ford, that sense of calm has come at a huge price — an inertia at City Hall, the reluctance by Tory to make hard decisions and repeated pandering to the leftists with funding for pet projects and agendas.
On the fiscal side, the combined capital, operating and rate-based budgets were up $900-million alone in 2017 compared to 2016 and the city has a risky, if not unholy, dependence on the Municipal Land Transfer Tax.
Tory has deferred a decision on the contracting out of garbage east of Yonge St. until after the 2018 election and his much-vaunted shake-up of Toronto Community Housing Corporation — following the task force recommendations of 18 months ago — is proceeding at a snail’s pace.
He didn’t win any friends on the Toronto Police Service either when he refused to show leadership on Pride’s decision to ban the police from marching in this year’s Pride parade.
That said, even a more restrained, less rough around the edges, Doug Ford will come into the race carrying his brother’s baggage. And there is plenty.
Tory and his supporters — both in the left-wing media and on the Gravy Train — will be doing anything and everything to remind voters of not only the chaos and addiction issues under Rob Ford, but what he has repeatedly claimed was the slashing of important city services.
Still, if anything, Ford will be asking the hard questions few in the media have done in the past three years.
“John Tory has had an easy ride up to now,” Ford said. “But believe me this is about to change...I plan to hold him accountable every day moving forward.”
slevy@postmedia.com
It's official: DoFo running for mayor of T.O. in 2018 | LEVY | Toronto & GTA | N
