[URBAN NOTE] "Don’t count out Doug Ford just yet"

[rfmcdonald]

Spacing Toronto's John Lorinc makes the point that Doug Ford still might win.

In many ways, Tory is trying to rebuild the Lastman coalition, which has as its core centre-of-the-road midtown and suburban homeowners — some on the right-wing of the Liberal spectrum, and some of the centre-left end of the Tory universe. He also had, and was clearly courting, that subset of red-meat conservatives who agreed with Ford’s program but got tired of his antics, probably because they were getting in the way of delivering on his aforementioned program. Lastly, Tory’s camp almost certainly includes some moderately left-of-centre voters who would normally be members of Chow Nation but have opted to cast their ballots strategically so as to ensure that Rob was gone, once and for all.

That coalition, I’m guessing, is a whole lot less cohesive today than it was last week, and here’s why:

For the red meat conservatives who drifted into Toryland, Doug, surely, is the real deal. While he’ll shoot his mouth off and say impolitic things, he’s not going to run into the bushes and drink vodka, nor is he going to show up on pirated cell phone videos with a crack pipe in hand (if such videos existed, they’d have been in circulation by now). In other words, he’s Rob without the blushing, whereas Tory continues to radiate that kind of wishy-washiness one can contract by hanging around Liberals for too long.

Now, for the Tory supporters who are nose-holding progressives (you know who you are), Chow in the past week or so appears to have started to find her voice and show some passion. Moreover, she’s launched a compelling attack on Tory’s Smart Track scheme, and in fact scored big last week when she vividly demonstrated that his preferred route would pass directly through some building parcels on the former Richview expressway right-of-way on Eglinton Ave. In an election where transit is the dominant policy issue, Chow’s critique seems increasingly credible vis-a-vis Tory’s plan and its questionable financing premises, and that fact alone may be changing some minds.

In other words, Tory’s support could begin bleeding both right and left, creating — at least in the interim — a far closer, and tenser, race than we’ve witnessed to date. Whether Chow can turn her slide around remains to be seen. But what does appear likely is that Tory’s double-digit lead may begin to shrink.