It’s illegal to start campaigning now to be Toronto’s mayor in the 2014 election, but Olivia Chow isn’t starting now.No one says she’s starting now, least of all her.
But she’s, um, starting now — in an unofficial kind of way.
Clues seem overwhelming. Not only has Chow topped every poll as the one to beat in the October 2014 vote, but the city buzzes with news about her “campaign” — more than six months before she can even file nomination papers.
The hottest rumour is that she has asked veteran consultant John Laschinger, who ran successful races for Brian Mulroney and David Miller, among others, to manage her campaign.
“It’s common knowledge,” says one experienced political insider. “I’ve heard it from many people and you know John likes to get involved early.”
“There’s no candidate, no campaign and no campaign manager,” Laschinger said when reached by the Star recently.
Then he added: “I’m sure that I’m going to be involved one way or another in the campaign, and I think that she’s a good candidate.”
Asked if he’s been approached in any way by Chow or her people, Laschinger said: “No comment.”
Before ticking off any more clues, it’s only fair to ask Chow what she’s going to do.
“I’m thinking about it,” she says, during a Sunday evening interview in the south Annex home she shared with Jack Layton until his death from cancer in 2011. It’s early June and she’s curled on a couch in the living room where Layton passed away only a few months after leading the federal New Democrats to Official Opposition status that May.
The thing is, Chow doesn’t stop talking there.
“There’s no doubt that what is happening is quite sad with all the distractions. Toronto has such serious issues — traffic gridlock, public transit, youth unemployment — and yet the city seems mired in scandal,” says Chow, referring to the latest drama engulfing Mayor Rob Ford. Star reporters and the American website Gawker reported having seen a video where the mayor was smoking what appeared to be crack.
When I ask Chow later in the week about Laschinger, she responds: “I haven’t decided if I’m running, so how can I possibly think of a campaign manager?”
‘Formidable candidate’
What else can she say, asks Robin Sears, a consultant with Earnscliffe Strategy Group. “I think she’ll run but it’s not appropriate for her to say so.”
For starters, he points to election rules that make it illegal for candidates to organize or raise money for the next vote until they’ve filed nomination papers, and the earliest that can be done is the first business day of 2014.
But it’s more than that, Sears adds. “She’d be a lame duck in the (Commons) and she’d make herself a target (for Ford supporters) . . . They’re terrified of her. They know she’s the most formidable candidate. If she runs, I think she’ll win because she’s the most impressive alternative candidate to Mayor Ford.”
His professional advice? “I would encourage her to do exactly what she’s doing — keep her powder dry and keep smiling.”
Others see her election as a potential blunder for Toronto. Just because there’s a buzz around her doesn’t mean she’s universally loved. Corporate lawyer Ralph Lean hears all the chatter about Chow and worries: “She would a disaster for the city of Toronto. Seriously.
“She’s the wrong person at the wrong time. I’ve watched her voting record and it’s ‘spend, spend, spend.’ She’s on the extreme left of the NDP,” insists Lean, a major Conservative fundraiser. “I will support any candidate who runs against Olivia Chow.”
On this recent Sunday evening at her home, the Trinity-Spadina MP is overnighting on her way back to Ottawa from the Vancouver conference of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. She took part as NDP transport critic and describes the drubbing Toronto took at the weekend event. Her mother, Ho Sze Chow, bustles about in the kitchen, grumbling in a stage whisper in Cantonese (as translated by Chow) about how her daughter tries to boss her elderly mother around, obviously without success.
“Nine out of 10 people came up in Vancouver and gave me a big hug, said they missed Jack, that I look better and then, the next line, ‘What is happening in Toronto?’ and they have this look on their faces — really something,” Chow explains. “The mayors of Vancouver and Calgary asked me, ‘What’s going on?’ I’m speechless. There’s not a lot I can say.”
She’s laughing as she tells these stories, mischievous and looking about 12, instead of her 56 years.
It’s true, says Chow, that she fights for money, just as she’s doing in her current job. She wants more infrastructure money for cities and argues that the Conservative government is playing a shell game with Canadian cities — using old, already committed funding to spend less on infrastructure. Transport Minister Denis Lebel denies the claim and doesn’t support Chow’s plan for a dedicated national transit committee with transparent funding.
What’s wrong with asking for money, Chow wants to know. She remembers former mayor Mel Lastman fighting for money for child-care programs at the municipalities conference in May 2000. Chow describes the Lastman mantra loudly: “Show me the money!”
Closing a chapter
The signs for a Chow campaign appear good — at least for now. HarperCollins is publishing her memoirs next January at the beginning of the election year. Layton, whom she married in 1988, was “such a big piece of my life” that Chow says she felt it was time to take stock, to close that chapter and to “think more of the future.”
Anne McGrath, former Layton chief-of-staff and a close Chow friend, says there is enormous pressure on her. “Everybody is talking to her. Everybody is asking her to run. Everybody is ready to support Olivia. I believe she feels she owes it to all the people who want to work for her to think seriously about running.”
Loyal advisers seem to be fairly bursting to work for a Chow candidacy. Joe Cressy, her 2011 federal campaign chair, rattles off all the trends in the recent Forum Research Inc. poll showing Chow beating Ford in every region of Toronto and among voters across the political spectrum. She receives high support among younger voters, which Cressy says “speaks to a vision for the future.”
The recent poll, a sampling of just under 1,000 Torontonians, shows Chow defeating Ford 57 per cent to 36 per cent in a one-to-one matchup and winning in a sampling of three-way races. (She wins in all other configurations except when the centre-left opposition is split three ways.)
But nobody talks about the taboo subject of raising money. Bob Gallagher, who worked for her during some of her 14 years on city council (she won several races) and for her 2011 federal campaign, says Chow already has donor lists from many campaigns, both municipal and federal; she can’t use them now, but she would hit the ground running.
“She is someone with credibility,” says Gallagher, communications director for the United Steelworkers.
Councillor Mike Layton, her stepson and good friend, says Chow is “one of those people who can bring this city together and stop all the name-calling. That’s what Toronto needs right now.”
On council since 2010, Layton missed serving with either his father or Chow, but says he grew up on their politics. “Our mayor talks about his fishing trips with the PM and backyard barbecues but he doesn’t seem to be able to get a penny for infrastructure money to benefit our city.”
Chow seems tough. Insults roll off her back, like last fall, when Doug Ford, the mayor’s brother, who says she’d be a “tax-and-spend” mayor, added that she was “no Jack Layton.”
Maybe not, but this is the woman who walked around for months with a tumour on her thyroid — one that turned out to be cancerous — because she was “too busy.” She agreed to surgery in 2005 only because her husband and other family members wouldn’t let it be.
Adjusting to loss
She needed that strength when she arrived in Toronto at 13 from Hong Kong, without English and with parents whose relationship soon deteriorated. Her intelligent, elegant father, a former school board superintendent and opera singer, couldn’t find work and became depressed and abusive. He never really recovered and Chow’s relationship with her father was very strained before he developed Alzheimer’s disease.
She’s a graduate of the Ontario College of Art with a fine arts degree from Guelph University and selected religion and philosophy courses from U of T. Her sculptures are powerful, one massive work in cement hangs in the living room. “The picture I like the most, Jack can’t handle,” she told me once. “So it’s chucked down the basement.” At the time, in 2005, I described it in the Star as “hugely phallic and hugely interesting.”
She misses him so much, his humour, his energy and knows she’ll never get over his loss. It’s a gradual adjustment to living without him. She finds love in her family, particularly her little granddaughters, Beatrice and Solace.
McGrath believes Chow formed a special bond with Canadians, and particularly Torontonians, in the days after her husband’s death. “She was so calm, serene, almost regal, and yet, at the same time, broken-hearted,” says McGrath. “People couldn’t help forming an emotional connection with her.”
“Olivia has two great love affairs in her life,” says Cressy. “One with Jack. And one with the city of Toronto.”
The strongest image of those last days in August 2011 was Chow, dry-eyed, her face immobile, like wax, standing by her husband’s coffin in Ottawa, in Toronto and at the state funeral at Roy Thomson Hall.
Ironically, sixteen months later, Chow’s face did become immobile, paralyzed by a facial nerve infection. At a time when her mouth was twisted and her smile non-existent, she just shrugged it off.
She’s slight and limber and nothing stopped her from zipping around the city on her flower-festooned bike — except perhaps snowstorms. Quite severe when the paralysis struck in December 2012, it has almost completely disappeared and Chow has regained mobility in her face
“Do I have thick skin? Who knows,” she says, and laughs again. “But I’ll tell you one thing, when people tell me they want me to run, I ask them what kind of city they want . . . I get them talking about their passions and ask: ‘Why wait? Why don’t you participate now?’ ”
Sounds like election talk. Reported by Toronto Star 9 hours ago.