In less than a month’s time, on July 25^th, there’ll be a by-election in Ward 2 Etobicoke North to pick the successor to the late Rob Ford.

I know, right? Pretty much slipped my mind too. What with all the other news going on. Transit madness. Budget talk. The official start of summer, lazy, hazy days. Who’s got the time or inclination to wrap their head around a by-election right now?

Besides, the general consensus seems to be, Michael Ford, nephew of the last two Ward 2 city councillors, will take this in a cakewalk. Name recognition. A brand loyalty from voters. It’s a summer by-election. So low voter turnout will compound the advantage of an established candidate. Why waste resources fighting a no-win battle?

Why indeed.

I am hopelessly naïve on many aspects of politics, never more so than campaign politics.

I would’ve thought this to be a perfect opportunity to plant a non-Ford flag in Ward 2. It’s the only council election going (as opposed to the general municipal campaign where there are 44 wards and a mayor’s race to contend with). Marshall the forces. Get behind a candidate. Challenge these Ford dynastic aspirations.

Sure, you might not win. In fact, you probably won’t. Although, this notion of invincibility doesn’t entirely jibe with the 2014 election results that saw a former mayor and 4 time Ward 2 councillor enter the race, under the sympathetic shadow of illness, and only pull in 58% of the popular vote. That meant 42% of Ward 2 voters didn’t vote for Rob Ford last time out. Seems like a base that could be worked with this time around.

But Michael Ford’s a nice kid, I hear. He’s expressed nice sentiments to a community his uncle actively disliked and maligned. Give him a chance to prove he’s better than either of his uncles.

So, in fact, it’s more of a coronation than an election. Michael Ford isn’t forced to do anything but knock on doors and issue press releases like this one about the KPMG’s Revenue Options Study.

Ward 2 residents can’t afford billions of dollars in costly new taxes; I have heard this message loud and clear at the door. While I support investment in the City’s housing and transit infrastructure, additional work must be done to find internal savings and efficiencies, and leverage private investment, before we ask taxpayers for even more of their hard earned money.

Sound familiar? Yeah, to me too. If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, issues statements that both his uncles would …

What gets me most about this, by-election or not, is that it represents something of a pattern I noticed going back to the 2014 municipal election. I worked a little on a campaign in Etobicoke, wrote about a number of suburban candidates. These were races that, for the most part, pretty much operated under the radar. No one news organization has the resources to cover 45 races, no matter how long a campaign may be. So these candidates in the wilderness wards are pretty much left to their own devices, left to dangle, making them even more susceptible to being steamrolled by the power of incumbency and other hyper-local forces.

Then we sit back and wonder why all these terrible councillors come down to City Hall from the suburbs. What’s wrong with voters out there? See? This is not our fault. It’s theirs. Just start voting better.

And when the opportunity like this one arises to challenge the status quo in places like Ward 2 – and make no mistake, Michael Ford is the status quo, he represents zero change except perhaps in tone, style – we shrug. What are you going to do? It’s a by-election. It’s summer. Low voter turnout. Name recognition. Why waste resources on fighting a losing battle?

So in waltzes another questionable local representative for the 416 hinterlands, leaving us shaking our heads. There’s a certain self-fulfillment in all that, a self-perpetuation. And the divisions continue.

I’ve heard similar rumblings looking at the mayor’s race in 2018. The mayor’s going to get re-elected. There’s nobody out there to challenge him. We’ll just concentrate on shoring up council support. The mayor is only one vote after all. Why waste our resources on that race?

Freed up of any significant challenger, you’ll have a mayor, all decked out in his inevitability, trying to shape the council even more in his image than it is now. His time and resources spent in wards where he’d really like to see a change of councillor, undermine his opposition. Sure, the mayor is just one vote but he’s made a lot of new council friends now, removed a few thorns in his side.

Maybe this is all too for want of nail from me. It is just a single ward by-election after all. But by constantly ceding ground in areas that you don’t think you can win, it winds up putting you on the defensive, concentrating on maintaining a base that you’re forced to defend rather than attempt to expand, reactive not proactive. Winning campaigns are rarely built like that.

— curiously submitted by Cityslikr