[URBAN NOTE] On Rocco Rossi's astonishingly ill-judged ads

[rfmcdonald]

As you've no doubt gathered so far, this year's Toronto mayoral election is positively pregnant with possibility. One of the interesting things is that this year's slate of candidates was full of Italian-Canadians: TTC chair Adam Giambrone, Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone, and Liberal Party fundraiser Rocco Rossi. Giambrone withdrew in February following a sex scandal, but Pantalone and Rossi have continued, Pantalone (at 17% or so) rating ahead of Rossi (10%).

Rossi has recently launched a new ad campaign aimed at mobilizing support. How? By harnessing Mafia imagery.

Italian-Canadians lashed out Monday at Rocco Rossi’s new mafia-themed ad campaign, which labels the mayoral candidate a “wise guy” and tells voters to “fuggetaboutit.”

“It sounded like an East Side Mario’s ad, quite honestly,” said Valentino Assenza, whose parents immigrated from Sicily. “I think the Italian-Canadian community was misrepresented . . . I was undecided, but him putting that ad out definitely confirmed that I’m not going to be giving my vote to him.”

The new campaign includes print ads featuring the words “wise guy,” “goodfella” and “bocce balls,” as well as TV and radio spots. The ads were launched as a new poll shows Rossi’s support stagnating at 9.7 per cent, a distant fourth place.

“There have been a lot of Hail Marys tossed into the air by the various candidates hoping to get more attention, to get a breakthrough, to somehow puncture the lead that Rob Ford has,” said Myer Siemiatycki, a politics professor at Ryerson University. “It does smack of desperation, it does smack of attention-seeking overdrive, and I don’t think it’ll be successful.”

Rossi, whose parents immigrated to Canada from Italy in the 1950s, said he used the stereotypes in his campaign to flip them around and give them new meaning. “Wise guy” is about being wise, Rossi said. “Bocce balls” is about being courageous and “goodfella” is about doing charity work.

“You want to have something catchy. You want to have something edgy. But there’s certainly no disrespect,” Rossi said. “I had my parents look at it. I had my family look at it. I had friends look at it. And they just love it.”

Commenters at Torontoist couldn't believe that these were real ads. blogTO has apparently started a contest aimed at replicating more like ads.

I think Rossi just self-destructed. You?