Was it because his opponent was gay?
Mayor Rob Ford
On Oct. 25, Toronto city councilor Rob Ford won the Toronto mayor’s race, defeating openly homosexual former Ontario cabinet minister George Smitherman, 47.1 per cent to 35.6 per cent. Smitherman, who was an early front-runner, lost decisively trailing Ford by nearly 100,000 votes.
Ford ran on a populist and fiscally conservative platform of freezing taxes and city spending, cutting the size of city council and reducing the budgets of politicians. His insurgent campaign, written off by the political pundits as late as the Summer, resonated with voters and his lead grew. Most polls in the final month had Smitherman within striking distance of the front-runner. Yet, on election night Ford was declared the winner less than 15 minutes after voting closed. It wasn’t even close.
Groping for an explanation, pundits suggested that angry, older, whiter voters in the outside, suburban ring around the downtown rose up against the progressive city center. Richard Florida, a social commentator at the University of Toronto, emphasized that the downtown Creative Class (as he labels it) of liberal, artistic, educated and tolerant voters have done a poor job communicating the benefits that their left-wing and gay-friendly city provides hard-working immigrant entrepreneurs and the white middle class that might work downtown but commutes to more affordable communities in North York, Scarborough, and Etobicoke.
The stunning part of this victory to many on the Left was that ethnic voters overwhelmingly supported Ford despite the fact that he questioned whether the city could easily accommodate a million more immigrants over the next decade. Apparently immigrants preferred the no-nonsense approach of ending the gravy train promised by Ford over the slick campaign offered by a former health minister that presided over the billion-dollar e-health boondoggle.
Social issues were not prominent in the campaign, but some political observers said that Smitherman’s homosexuality might have turned off traditional-minded immigrant and elderly voters. Michael Coren wrote at MercatorNet: “Tamils, Muslims, Africans, West Indians and many other groups refused to do what white liberals told them. They implied, and sometimes openly shouted, that they do not support homosexual marriage, are not fans of sexual decadence and do not think that the white left is always correct.” There is no polling evidence to support the thesis, but it seems probable.
Indeed, Smitherman’s ‘husband’ and adopted child were ubiquitous during the campaign, and every speech and campaign stop included a carefully scripted moment when Smitherman took his son and kissed his partner. The media did not focus on this, but in the hundreds of campaign appearances a candidate must make when running for mayor of Toronto, the message certainly got out.
In the final days of the campaign, a radio advertisement ran on the Canadian Tamil Broadcasting Corporation featuring two people talking about the mayor’s race in which one character said, “Take Rob Ford, for example. His wife is a woman.” Smitherman’s campaign condemned the “homophobic” advertisement as “hurtful and hateful,” saying it “have no place in Toronto.” Ford also condemned the independently produced ads.
The incident occurred too late to effect the outcome of the election – it is highly improbable that tens of thousands of voters broke one way or another over the final weekend over this ad — but it did create a useful pretense for Smitherman’s defenders to play the victim card. They could point to so-called homophobia as a reason for their golden boy’s defeat. Ontario’s Liberal Innovation and Research Minister Glen Murray, who is openly gay, said on the social networking site Twitter that “If u vote Ford u r voting for bigotry.” He also re-tweeted a message that said Ford, Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak and Prime Minister Stephen Harper represented a “trifecta of Republican-style right-wing ignorance and bigotry.”
Murray was roundly condemned, but in apologizing called for the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party to “root out” anyone “who would try to exploit hatred” for political gain. Murray claimed that in the closing days of the municipal elections, he and his family as well as his homosexual friends and neighbours, were the victims of “unrelenting hateful, homophobic attacks” related to the campaign.
In an odd confluence of analysis by both social conservatives and homosexuals, it appears that both believe Rob Ford won, at least in part, because his opponent was an open homosexual.
What matters now is that the culture of city hall changes. When Ford looks for places to save taxpayers’ precious dollars, he might consider cutting subsidies to the Gay Pride Parade and Planned Parenthood. Ford has implied that the former is on the table, but the latter has not been addressed at all. With respect for taxpayers is the unofficial governing motto for the new mayor, one place to cut spending will be in highly divisive and dubious programs that promote homosexuality and abortion.
