[URBAN NOTE] "Ford Nation stands by their man"

[rfmcdonald]

Toronto Star columnist Catherine Porter writes about her visit to the heart of Ford Nation in western Toronto's Etobicoke. The results make for interesting reading.

I wanted to see if the polls were right: that Ford Nation was emboldened, not shaken, by last week’s allegations. Since Alberta’s Wildrose Party withered on the vine overnight, I don’t trust the polls. But every single Ford supporter I talked to told me that if there was an election tomorrow they’d still vote Ford.

The only person I met who has changed his mind — and not in the way you’d think — was Ron Jasinski. He voted for George Smitherman in 2010. He moved to Ford Nation last year, after discovering city workers wouldn’t be digging up the lead water pipes on his street for another six months or so. He emailed Ford’s office. The mayor called him back that very day.

“He said, ‘We will have a crew there at 7 a.m. tomorrow.’ And 7 a.m. the next day a crew was there replacing the lead water pipes,” said Jasinski, a commercial real estate agent with a honking black Escalade.

“To me, the media comes out worse in this than Rob Ford does,” he said. “People are making allegations, using unnamed sources … If I’m going to say something negative, I’ll say it to your face and use my name. It’s lazy journalism.”

I heard a lot of this. Ford Nation does not believe the Star and Gawker. Nor do they believe the Globe and Mail, which came out with its own investigation into Brother No. 2 this past weekend. They believe there is a vendetta against the Fords and that we journalists are making money along the way. (I pointed a few to a recent American survey that pegged the average newspaper reporter’s salary at $36,000. I don’t think they were swayed.)