Tag Archives: Joe Pantalone

Whither You Progressives

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Here’s where the numbers don’t add up for me. (Nice cold start. No mucking about with wordy intro.)

In the 2006 municipal election, incumbent mayor David Miller was re-elected with nearly 57% of the vote. According to the latest poll from Nanos, the outgoing mayor’s endorsed candidate, Joe Pantalone, is pulling in 15%. My very unscientific reading of that suggests over 40% of a supposed left of centre, progressive voting bloc has dissipated somewhere into the ether. Where to, is what I’m wondering.

It’s hard to imagine that even with all that alleged anger manifesting itself post-09 civic workers’ strike, there’d be such a stampede across the political spectrum toward the decidedly un-progressive Rob Ford. George Smitherman has run a very right of centre campaign, tossing out the occasional lefty crumb to keep up liberal appearances. So where are those 40% of David Miller voters?

Granted, not everyone who ever voted for David Miller would consider themself progressive or left of centre. In 06 there was the power of incumbency and, arguably, a weakness of opponent. In 03 Miller was deemed the agent of change who would undo the disrepair wrought on City Hall by the Lastman gang. Change seems to be a major player again in this campaign. Regardless of ideology, the electorate has moved to candidates they think will bring about the biggest change for the city.

Still, it’s hard to reconcile the Pantalone 15%. As we have stated on more than one occasion here, Mr. Pantalone is not a strong campaigner. So, that must be factored into the equation. He’s simply been unable to rally the troops under his candidacy’s flag. But with no other viable left of centre candidate (at least in the mainstream media – and thus, a majority of voters’ eyes) on offer, 15% seems like a very, very low number.

Yes, there is the Ford factor. Many who would naturally tend Pantalone-sque are so violently appalled at the prospects of the Etobicoke councillor becoming mayor that they have abandoned their natural base in order to stop that from happening. The Deputy Mayor simply never polled high enough to be considered the candidate to defeat Ford. That simply takes us back to the question, why?

What’s taking place here in ward 19 may offer up a possible answer.

Two progressive candidates are fighting it out for the council seat that opened up, appropriately enough, when Joe Pantalone decided to run for mayor. Michael Layton has been endorsed by the former councillor and is back by the legendary local NDP machine including his father’s wife, Olivia Chow, the M.P. for the area. Karen Sun is an independent voice who has spent the last decade working on a series of municipal level matters both at City Hall and outside, ranging from environmental to governance issues.

The division between these two candidates, I think, represents the ongoing transformation of progressive thought, and may help explain Joe Pantalone’s anemic showing in the campaign so far.

Mike Layton epitomizes the old school, left wing coalition of urban elitism, the “ethnic vote” (for lack of a better term), unions and Tommy Douglas-like grassroots populism. The “ethnic vote”, I would suggest, is fairly disparate at this point that doesn’t vote en masse for a single candidate. Ditto, the union vote. Populism has become largely right-wing recently. And us elites can only be counted on not to vote too far right. That’s a tough group to stitch together in hopes of gaining a plurality. A little of each may not be enough to secure a victory.

Especially if you’re vying with a candidate who is offering up a similarly progressive but far more urban oriented platform. For a candidate growing up with a father and stepmom both city councillors, Layton the Younger displays remarkably little affinity for local, urban specific issues. Check out his Community Experience under the About link on his website. A camp councillor?!

In comparison Karen Sun represents the face of urban progressivism. Her work has been focused almost exclusively at the municipal level. This is vitally important since we as a nation are becoming increasingly urbanized. With over 3/4s of us now living in what are considered urban environments, it is becoming more critical for us to elect those well versed on those issues to represent us. Progressive values have become increasingly linked to urban values.

Bringing us back to the flagging Pantalone support. While he can rightfully boast of a number of progressive initiatives he’s helmed or supported, his endorsement of Michael Layton displayed a proclivity for stale thinking. Whether he believed Layton was the best candidate on offer for ward 19 or if it was just a case of mutual back-scratching with the NDP powers-that-be, Pantalone showed himself to be out of step with where much of the progressive, left of centre is at the moment. He may be the most left leaning voice still in the mayoral election (that is within the realm of the remaining 3 front runners. Perhaps if the wider voting public had been allowed to see more of Himy Syed, the city would be in the throes of the same deliberation we here in ward 19 are currently in the midst of between Layton and Sun) but Pantalone simply is not in step with the wider progressive movement.

Thus, leaving much of the left limply unenthusiastic and prone to drifting reluctantly to where they think they’re needed most.

— unsupportively submitted by Cityslikr

Vision Quest V

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So far on our Vision Quest we’re batting .500, with a couple candidates we profiled dropping out of the mayoral race after our write-up on them. Last week was Rocco Rossi. With the chatter swirling around election circles in the last few hours, let’s see if the trend continues.

Up today: Joe Pantalone!

Frankly, even factoring in the Rob Ford phenomenon, we here at All Fired Up in the Big Smoke find the Deputy Mayor’s campaign to have been both the most confounding and aggravating. Confounding, because as the only highly recognizable progressive voice in the race, he should be enjoying a wide swath of support from what we thought was a deep well of left of centre leaning in this city. Aggravating, because his campaign took so long to start pushing back against the prevailing nonsense of a city on the road to ruin that had taken hold of the campaign imagination.

Some of this, obviously, was beyond Mr. Pantalone’s control. With anti-incumbency in the air even before the race started, he represented the face of an administration the howlers howled about. Worse still, it felt like he wasn’t the best face put forward. A 2nd, 3rd or even 4th choice meekly offered up after the Adam Giambrone flame-out and a couple other ‘names’ declined to toss their hats into the ring. If this was all the last 7 years was going to give us, well, it’s little wonder those on the left developed a bit of a wandering eye. Joe Pantalone felt unsatisfactorily compensatory. A definite sense lingered that if David Miller had one more election in him to defend his legacy, we would’ve rallied mightily to the cause. But since Mayor Miller wasn’t up for the fight, his supporters felt a little gun shy too.

More disheartening still, Mr. Pantalone is not the strongest of campaigners. There’s an uneasiness you detect when he’s doing the dirty work of politicking in big crowds or even up on stage during debates. Pantalone has shown flashes of spirit and intellectual acumen at points in debates but mostly it’s been awkward mouthing and re-mouthing of talking points and moldy gardening analogies that simply haven’t ignited the fire under an unsettled electorate.

The ironic and sad fact of the matter is that the exact same could be said about Councillor Rob Ford. He’s sweatily awkward out there glad-handing in crowds. His participation in debates consists of talking points and talking points only. Yet, he’s managed to flame the zeitgeist of angry sentiment into a poll position in the race until recently. Perhaps it all comes down to what Councillor Adam Vaughan said in pulling the plug on his support of Mr. Pantalone earlier today, “…you have to fight the election you’re dealt, not the one you want.” Arguably, Joe Pantalone got a mitt full of dud cards.

Vaughan’s move to help shore up support for George Smitherman in the race against Ford is the latest defection of left-leaning names that leaves the Deputy Mayor dangling, essentially. There are calls for him to pull out of the race to help ensure a Smitherman victory. (Or more pointedly, ensure a Ford loss.) So inconsequential has Pantalone become in the race that when he released his economic plan earlier this week, it received scant notice. Who cares? It’s not like he’s going to be mayor anyway.

And yet, here we are, demanding fidelity to a two man race between candidates whose plans and platforms have been examined, re-examined, and examined again, only to be found severely wanting in almost every case. Two candidates who have pushed the premise of a city on the brink of ruin while the facts suggest otherwise. Two candidates pledging to bring in tough, neo-conservative policies that are suspect and very likely unnecessary if not harmful to the well being of this city.

Two candidates who, theoretically, should be splitting the right wing vote and allowing a progressive like Joe Pantalone to sail on through up the middle. Somehow that just isn’t happening. The progressive base just has not bought into Councillor Pantalone as its standard bearer. There is, it seems, what they are calling down south in the U.S. of A., an  “Enthusiasm Gap”.

Yes, Joe Pantalone and his team must accept some blame for that. Things just did not click when they needed clicking. But the wind was never, ever, at Pantalone’s back. Enough voters simply did not want to hear what Joe had to say, no matter how much truth there was to it (and there was much more truth emanating from the Pantalone campaign then there was from any of the other front runners), no matter how many outside, unbiased voices assured us that Toronto was faring alright, given what was going on in the wider world around us.

That was a tough, pretty well impossible, sell to the voters of Toronto in 2010. The salesmen of defeat and retreat have been louder, more forceful and ultimately, it seems, more persuasive. If there was a time when more reasonable voices should’ve been heard above the din, clearly this wasn’t it. This wasn’t Joe Pantalone’s time. A sad end to a 30 year municipal career which deserved better.

— sadly submitted by Cityslikr

Compare And Contrast

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As Toronto’s mayoral race is being forcibly shoehorned into an ill-fitting two man race, leaving anyone who usually sits happily left of centre with the distasteful choice between worse, worser or simply making a defiant gesture, the time has come to turn our attentions more fully to the council races. To protect the city’s progressive spirit from the nasty onslaught of a His Honour SmitherFord™®© (FordMan®™©?), a council needs to be in place that will resist the worst impulses of such a short-sighted, small thinking regime. Barring some wacky turn of events between now and October 25th, no one is going to assume the mayoralty with a sweeping mandate. So a strong, purposeful council needs to be in place.

We here in Ward 19 (Joe Pantalone’s former stronghold) have already endorsed Karen Sun as our councillor of choice. But a post in yesterday’s Torontoist caught our attention as it featured our particular council race. It interviewed the three perceived front runners and the thoughts and opinions expressed by two of them struck us as typifying the stark divisions at work in the city at the moment. Whoever prevails will go a long way to determining the direction Toronto takes over the next few years.

Karen Sun versus Sean McCormick.

A quick look at their respective backgrounds and experience reflects an important distinction between the two. Sun has worked with the city as part of its Urban Forestry Services and Water and Wastewater Division. She’s the Toronto chapter executive director of the Chinese Canadian National Council and serves on the boards of several extra-governmental community organizations, including Heritage Toronto. McCormick is a media personality who founded the annual summer Queen West Musicfest.

Karen Sun has made a career of active civic engagement with the community. Sean McCormick has a single resume padder. I know throughout this campaign we’ve heard much antagonism toward “career politicians” but it’s safe to assume which one of these candidates will hit the ground running if elected.

Sun and McCormick’s responses to the questions posed by Torontoist also reveal a large gap in knowledge about the issues at work in Ward 19. Simple-minded, misguided ideology informs one while an open, informed, flexible approach is the basis of the other.

When asked about development in Liberty Village, McCormick is generally in favour of it but “…concedes that developers require a certain amount of oversight.” He then focuses on one issue, the pedestrian bridge that is in the works, as if that alone will solve the problems and concerns of increasing density in the area. Like the mayoral candidate he’s fashioning his campaign after, McCormick offers little in the form of insightful ideas that he would bring to the table as councillor.

Same question asked of Karen Sun? “I think there will be more pressure to build denser, and to build towers. And I think that’s fine,” she said. “But if we are going to be building up, I think we need to go to some of those other cities and see how they build tower communities well.”

“Because right now [Toronto is] zoning them as mixed-use, and then building twenty, thirty-storey towers with a Rabba and a Blockbuster on the first floor, and calling that mixed-use. When you’re putting another thousand residents into an area that used to be zoned as employment lands and the only employment opportunities are retail at a couple of stores, I mean, that’s not a community, right?”

On that response alone it’s clear who the more qualified candidate is but it continues for 6 more questions, all of which reveal Mr. McCormick to be as unfit for elected office as Rob Ford is. The Ossington bar/restaurant moratorium? Sun isn’t in favour of it but largely due to the lack of public consultation that was involved. She believes much of the business-resident friction could be alleviated by proper enforcement of current noise by-laws and that the city should work with the province in changing the liquor law licensing to make explicit distinctions between bars and restaurants. Moratorium bad, development good, according to McCormick. He then proceeds to paint the scene on Ossington in its pre-hip days as a hotbed of criminality that suggests he spent more time watching Law & Order at home on TV than he did in the vicinity. And really, Sean? “Ne’er-do-wells”? How old are you anyway? 90?

How about transit expansion? Sun wants to proceed with Transit City because it’s this first massive transit plan for Toronto in decades that has all 3 levels of government on board. McCormick? Subways please and then he goes on to applaud former candidate, Rocco Rossi’s largely discredited plans for selling city assets to finance them. Same theme for the idea of electrification of the Georgetown corridor and Union-Pearson airport link. Sun yes, McCormick no, as it’ll place too much burden on the tax payer, as increased expense automatically translates into increased taxes in Sean’s world. This, despite the fact that, an electrified Georgetown corridor would be highly beneficial to residents of Liberty Village not only environmentally but electric train technology would allow for a stop near the Village which diesel wouldn’t. But, no matter to likes of Sean McCormick and his empty posturing as Angry Taxpayer Man.

While the die may, may, be cast for our disagreeable choice of mayor, we can counteract that by diligently keeping the likes of Sean McCormick out of City Hall. If a healthy majority of Toronto wards elect councillors as intelligent, well-versed and hardworking as Karen Sun, the situation will not be nearly as dire. We can endure a SmitherFord/FordMan®™© as our mayor if we surround them with a council consisting of the likes Karen Sun.

— positively submitted by Cityslikr