Ford Notion.

I think a poli-sci prof at U of T got to the heart of the matter when asked of former Rob Ford chief of staff Nick Kouvalis' brainwave to create a "Tea Party North."

 
Rob Ford and former chief of staff Nick Kouvalis conferring at city council in December. (Toronto Star)

Said Nelson Wiseman:

{Rob Ford] had [the] highest municipal turnout record. Well, really, how competitive have the last muncipal elections been? [Kouvalis] has had a big moment of glory [and] I think he's very smart, but I also think this has one to his head."

1. There is no partisan tradition in modern Toronto civic municipal affairs, in contrast with, say, Vancouver and Montreal. Traditionally, Toronto city councillors are idiosyncratic and notion of party-caucus solidarity is anathema to them.

2. If such an outside pressure group were to form - and Kouvalis vows to have something to announce by months' end - it will soon be matched by another upstart pressure group on the left. They will drown each other out, and council will get on with its business.

3. "The left wing has a monopoly on this stuff," Kouvalis says of groups like the Toronto Environmental Alliance that lobby on particular interests. I don't know about a monopoly, but lefties at city hall have been better organized - or I should just say organized - compared with right-wing counterparts. As with the U.S. Tea Partiers, the right in Toronto has, going back to the '70s, been fragmented, managing to coalesce around few issues. The lefties, on council and their fellow travelers in NGOs, the unions and so on, are steeped in the logistics of creating voting blocs and whipping up support in the community. They've been doing it for more than 40 years.

4. Kouvalis hopes to transform the energized volunteers that propelled the unlikeliest of Toronto mayors, a pugnacious Rob Ford widely disliked by most of his 43 fellow councillors - into the mayor's chair. In this, Ford was greatly aided by the non-campaign waged by improbable favorite George Smitherman (the way this played out will be sadly familiar to Hillary Clinton supporters from 2008), and by an incumbent rendered unpopular by the same set of fiscal crises Ford now faces. If the experience of Obama's Organizing for America is anything to go by - and Kouvalis readily cites the U.S. arena has his inspiration - note that the 8 million OFA organizers vaporized on Nov. 5, 2008, and didn't even bother to come out and vote to prevent the Dem rout in the midterms. So good luck in turning volunteers from a brief campaign into a sustained political movement.

5. The "Ford Nation" cudgel the new mayor used against Premier McGuinty last week to extract $150 million that His Honour says is due Toronto from Queen's Park is a hollow threat unless Ford takes leadership of it. He's the only member of the rag-tag team that got him elected with any kind of visibility. But Ford has yet to solve any of the Toronto problems he was elected to address, and Kouvalis is intent on Ford Nation expanding its reach first throughout Ontario and then Canada. Ford has an uncertain grasp of GTA issues, much less those of Fort Francis or Arnprior, as we soon to discover to our repeated misery.

6. Three reminders of who exactly is the leader of this "Ford Nation," and you decide whether he's ready for prime time:

Comments

[Rob Graham]

The more I observe these people that declare themselves 'conservatives' the more certain I am that a fair number of them are narcissists. They simply can't seem to abide anything resembling a difference of opinion.