Scott Stinson: Can Brad Bradford capitalize on Chris Alexander’s late exit from Toronto mayoral race?

Chris Alexander has said that he entered the Toronto mayoral race in part because he didn’t think that Brad Bradford could win it.

Sign In or Create an Account

It would be ironic, then, if his brief dalliance with municipal politics ensures that Bradford does not.

Alexander, the former federal Conservative cabinet minister, ended his mayoral candidacy on Tuesday, 20 days before election day and on the first day of advance voting. His tardy departure, after consistently running a distant third behind incumbent Olivia Chow and Bradford, her would-be conservative challenger, ensures that Alexander’s name will remain on the ballot. It will also come ahead of Bradford’s, due to the incontrovertible nature of the alphabet. Will that peel away some of Bradford’s potential votes? Possibly. And in a race that should be tight now that it is down to two main candidates, that could make a significant difference.

And so ends one of the stranger political campaigns in recent memory. Alexander, was also a former Canadian ambassador to Afghanistan, represented Ajax-Pickering in the Stephen Harper government. He became best known, and not in a good way, for promoting the “Barbaric Cultural Practices Hotline” that the Harper Tories floated in the dying days of a desperate — and losing — 2015 campaign.

Columnist Jesse Kline keeps you up to date with what’s happening in Israel and the effects of antisemitism on life here in Canada. Friday mornings.

By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.

A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.

The next issue of Channel Israel will soon be in your inbox.

We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try again

Alexander was an also-ran in the 2017 Conservative leadership campaign won by Erin O’Toole, but has otherwise mostly stayed out of public life, right up until he announced his bid to defeat Chow at the very end of July. This was almost universally met with confusion. Alexander had no connection to City Hall or the Toronto electorate, and he gave himself almost no time to make those inroads before the campaign was in full swing.

In announcing his departure at his campaign office on Tuesday morning, Alexander said that “our path to success, it became clear to me over this weekend, was not obvious, and perhaps not there at all.”

To this, one must wonder if Alexander had not looked at a poll until Saturday morning. He had been steadily more than 20 percentage points behind Bradford and even further back of Chow. The Alexander wave that he would have needed to turn things around hadn’t amounted to even a ripple by Labour Day, but he soldiered on, muddying up the waters for a Bradford campaign that wanted to scoop up all of the anti-Chow voters.

No groundwork, late entry, late departure: a real masterwork of political operations.

Alexander didn’t endorse either of his rivals on Tuesday, although that could come later, especially if he was being honest in his statements that removing Chow, the former federal NDP MP, was the main motivation behind his brief run.

Alexander told the Toronto Star recently that people who were “keener political observers” of the city than he was — a strange thing to confess when running to lead that city — didn’t think that Bradford could win. “I don’t think he’s the ideal candidate, but if I had confidence that Chow was on the path to being removed, I very well might not have run,” Alexander told the Star.

That sounds like someone who should be throwing his support, such as it is, behind the only person with a realistic shot at removing Chow. But, as already noted, no one would accuse Alexander of being a master tactician at this point in the process.

Bradford, not surprisingly, appealed on Tuesday for Alexander supporters to jump to his campaign, positioning himself as the only change candidate on offer. Chow, also not surprisingly, warned that the choice was now clear, between the “caring” Toronto that she leads and the “bad old days” that Bradford represents. “Cut and slash,” as she described it. “Everything falling apart,” she said. Brad Bradford as Scrooge McDuck, that kind of thing.

Bradford is indeed promising a spending review, but the slash-and-burn criticisms are harder to square with the endorsements the city councillor has recently picked up from, for example, Toronto Liberal MPs Leslie Church and Vince Gasparro, not to mention Rush frontman Geddy Lee. (The Rush discography is not known for being particularly pro-austerity.)

Chow, though, will almost certainly be ramping up the Bradford Spectre of Doom after Alexander’s withdrawal. She has spent the campaign as a comfortable front-runner, with a cushion of support that was aided by Bradford and Alexander splitting the non-Chow votes. She’s offered a few policy promises, most of which expand programs already in place and which give the impression that she wants to keep on doing what she’s doing. She’s running a safe campaign, but as of Tuesday morning that might not be enough. If Alexander voters do swing to Bradford in numbers, the race could be close to a dead heat.

Bradford won’t have to change his campaign much in Alexander’s absence, because he was already running one in which he was the only alternative to Chow’s high-tax, high-spend record.

And with Alexander out of the way, even belatedly so, he has about three weeks left to lock down that pitch.

National Post

sstinson@postmedia.com

This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.