Don’t know about you people but here it’s Friday, and here Friday means: Meet A Mayoral Candidate!

Up this week, Keith Cole for Mayor. So just Get Over It!

If ever a mayoralty campaign in Toronto needed the panache and zazz that Keith Cole brings to the table, it is this one in 2K10™®©. To date it has been a largely dreary affair, damp and musty with pessimism and hostility. Everything, it seems, is negative and out of control at City Hall and without severe measures, our future will be bleak.

With most of the frontrunners adhering to this narrative and vying to prove themselves the meanest, toughest, cuttiest and slashiest som’bitch out there, Cole is all about the positive. He is the can-do to the others’ can’t. We can’t think big in terms of public transit, they say. We can’t provide secure, well-paying jobs to our public employees. We can’t stand up to the egregious neglect shown us from the provincial and federal governments.

Well, colour candidate Keith Cole unconvinced and unimpressed to such unconstructive sentiments.

A performance artist, Cole is naturally passionate about the arts and what they contribute to the well-being of the city. “Toronto is more than TIFF, LUMINATO and Harbourfront Centre,” Cole told us. “Our city has more events (often free) in one week than anyone could ever attend. We have to foster, care and support the arts in our city. We are so lucky to have this vibrant artistic culture in this city but we have to care for it or it could disappear.” A timely thought, what with the battle now waging over how to use the revenue from the new billboard tax. Lead by the organization CityBeautiful.ca , there is a call for all the money to be directed towards the arts, a notion championed at City Hall by Budget Chief Shelley Carroll and mayoral candidate Joe Pantalone. That’s not going to happen this year but we have a pretty good sense which way a Mayor Keith Cole would vote on the matter.

But it’s not all about the arts for Cole. The overlying theme of his candidacy is civic engagement. Imagine JFK in a wig, dress and pumps, invoking his fellow citizens to ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country, and then tap dancing to Michael Sembello’s Maniac. That’s candidate Cole.

“Think of what Toronto could be if more people just got involved,” he said. “Educate yourself. Figure it out for yourself. Get involved with politics and your politicians, your community and your city.”

And pick up your own fucking garbage, we might add, agreeing whole-heartedly with Cole’s assessment of the city looking dirty, inundated as it seems to be with litter. True civic engagement means not thinking others are going to clean up after you. Or assuming someone else has called about that burnt out streetlight in the back lane or the huge pothole in the middle of the road. Engaging means participating and Keith Cole sees that as the first step toward living in a healthy, exciting and fair society.

Like many of the candidates running for the mayor’s office, Cole’s campaign is full of ideas and short on matters of implementation. How does one demand and get increased civic engagement from the population? In a city allegedly strapped for cash, how would a Mayor Keith Cole ensure that funding for the arts is maintained, even increased, in the face of competing demands from other sectors and the philistinism of a council filled with Rob Fords, Giorgio Mammolitis and Doug Holydays?

Granted, the task of building and strengthening is much more complex than the simple wielding of an axe to hack and diminish as many of Cole’s mayoral rivals advocate. Even though the theory goes that it requires more energy to frown than smile, the opposite is true when it comes to governing. Keith Cole stands for optimism, engagement and a heaping help of civic pride in Toronto. That’s an uphill, rockier road to travel compared to the easy and smooth sailing of political destruction and reactionary malevolence that has been the main theme of the campaign so far. This race needs to hear more from Keith Cole and the little ray of sunshine he would bring to the proceedings.

When asked to answer our feeble question, If the present mayor would like his legacy to be that of the Transit Mayor, how would a Mayor Cole like to see his legacy written?, Cole initially expressed surprise. “Is that what David Miller wants?” Thus, he became the first profiled candidate to call us out on the issue. We… think so, would be our response. Pretty sure we read that somewhere. Let us get back to you.

Having not had that cleared up for him, Cole gamely proceeded. Keith Cole Art Mayor, he told us but also wouldn’t rule out being The Bicycle Mayor before finally settling on a legacy. Art. Bikes. Green.

Now if we can only get the other candidates espousing such positive, constructive and proactive ideas.

— dutifully submitted by Cityslikr