[URBAN NOTE] "With friends like these: Ford revelations leave Tories under fire"

[rfmcdonald]

Charlie Gillis at MacLean's notes that the Ford brothers are fast becoming an election issue for the Conservatives.

Unbeknownst to you, a dirt clod is flying through the air, directly toward your head. You’d hope some bystander would see it in time to shout, “Duck!” But that doesn’t happen. So afterward, as you wipe the grit from your eyes, you’re inclined to a moment of self-reflection. Should you have known the clod was coming?

Here’s where the Harper campaign finds itself today. Hungry for votes in the Greater Toronto Area, they embraced the populist might of Rob and Doug Ford, welcoming them this week to a campaign event in the Fords’ stomping ground of Etobicoke, arranging to share the spotlight with them on Saturday at a rally for the Prime Minister in Toronto. The brothers’ propensity to share unwelcome thoughts (Rob mused in late August about Doug replacing Stephen Harper, should the Tories lose) mattered not. Nor did Rob Ford’s admission to using crack cocaine while mayor of Toronto. This was Team Blue closing ranks.

So Rob and Doug hit the pavement, cameras in tow, to knock on doors in key swing ridings such as Etobicoke–Lakeshore and Scarborough Centre. “I think we’re doing well out there,” Doug Ford boasted on Tuesday. “We’ve had a really good response.”

Then, within 36 hours, it was all up the spout. On Wednesday evening, Maclean’s posted on its website an excerpt from Mayor Rob Ford: Uncontrollable, a book written by Mark Towhey about his time as Rob’s chief of staff at city hall. The passage features a harrowing, damning account of Rob Ford in a screaming match with his wife, Renata, in which he berates and threatens her over drugs, money and, possibly, a gun in their house—all while their children were trying to sleep upstairs. Links to the item quickly spread on social media.

By Thursday morning, the Tories were under fire. At an appearance in Trois-Rivières, Que., reporters asked whether Harper was associating himself with Rob Ford, given that Towhey’s account painted a grim portrait indeed of life inside the Ford household. Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau said Harper should be “embarrassed that he’s having to count on the support of Rob Ford for his re-election.”